


Beyond the Veil

by Rizandace



Series: Magic Curses [6]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, NOT canon compliant (Q doesn't die in 4x13), more detailed warnings in author's note
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-11
Updated: 2020-02-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:14:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22656838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rizandace/pseuds/Rizandace
Summary: The first thing they had done when they'd realized Q was nowhere to be found inside the castle was to send a bunny to Earth. Their missive (Is Quentin with you?) to Julia and Alice was returned instantly (No. Why? Everything okay?).“Margo, I need you to tell me everything’s fine,” Eliot said, when the day had passed without any sign of Q. “Make me fucking believe it, because I feel like I’m about to lose my shit.”“Everything’s fine,” Margo said, and Eliot’s hand went to his hair and tugged, hard. She hadn’t even managed to sound a little bit convincing. “I’m sure everything’s fine.”“He could be hurt,” Eliot said, the words scraping out of him. “What if - what if he’shurt, Margo, god, I feel like my heart is - is - ” he didn’t really have the words to describe it to her. Obviously he was scared out of his mind, had been getting steadily more and more frantic as the day went on.But it was more than simple fear. It was the absolute knowledge that he didn’t know who he was anymore without Quentin, that any sense of himself was going to fly entirely out the window if he lost - if helost- “Fuck this.Fuckthis, where the fuck could he be? I need ideas.”
Relationships: Alice Quinn/Julia Wicker, Fen/Margo Hanson/Josh Hoberman, Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: Magic Curses [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1366897
Comments: 100
Kudos: 290





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> I am very excited to be returning to the Curses universe! This story requires a bit of context, and some content warning. I have had the idea for this particular curse for months, and it was only working on my recently completed novel-length fic, Running All This Time, that delayed this story from being posted. The fact that this fic is coming out during the airing of season 5, when Eliot grieving for Quentin in canon is something being explored by the show, was never my intention.
> 
> However, that’s where we’re at. I’ll start by saying that my happy endings guarantee is fully in force on this one, but, this is the darkest Curses story yet. Things get rough. And while Quentin does not die, not even temporarily, the story does explore the theme of Eliot and the others grieving/missing Quentin, forced to live without him for a period of time. If that theme hits some not-so-great pressure points for you, I completely understand. This is not a canon-compliant fic. In this universe, Quentin never died in the mirror realm, and he and Eliot have been together for years, coming up against impossible odds and winning every time.
> 
> If you are hesitant about this fic and want more specific spoilers in order to decide if it’s safe for you to read, please message me on Tumblr @Nellie-Elizabeth.
> 
> Now, one further programming note: I will say that while this story is part of a series, and I’d love it if you went back and read the others and let me know what you think, you should be okay to read this even without the context of the previous works. Quentin and Eliot live in Fillory. Margo and Fen rule Fillory together and are in a relationship with each other and Josh. Alice and Julia are a couple and have a child, back on Earth. If you know that, you should be okay to jump right in.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! Quentin Coldwater is alive and happy with the love of his life Eliot Waugh. We make the rules.

**ELIOT**

"Do you think the Lorians would want a seat at the table?" Fen asked doubtfully, looking over the charter in front of her.

"Well, they're going to want to review the language, at any rate," one of the advisers put in. "Especially the order of the names."

"But it's in alphabetical order!" Margo said. "Fillory comes before Loria - sorry, not sorry."

"I think you may be underestimating the general pettiness of our tenuous allies, my dear," Josh said, smiling and patting Margo on the shoulder in a way that would get most people slapped across the face.

Margo just shrugged and gave Josh a little frown, while Eliot tried not to yawn. As far as he could tell, he was only at this damn meeting because Margo wanted to torture him. Misery loves company, and all that. But his Bambi was the High King, and his darling Fen was the High Queen, and he loved Fillory, so... here he was. It was not appropriate to sigh in over-dramatized boredom just because they'd been arguing over the finer points of a symbolic declaration of peace and unity for _three hours_. It was making him irritable.

Also, he missed his husband.

If Eliot were being honest with himself, that was probably the biggest reason for his crappy mood. Quentin had been on Earth for the past three days, helping that whole crowd with about twenty million different little problems that all seemed to have cropped up at the same time.

There was some minor Hedge squabble that Kady needed help with, and Julia was trying to figure out how to use her magic, which had started coming back over the past couple of years (triggered originally by an incident during Alice's pregnancy), and the Neitherlands were going to shit again which meant Alice was up to her eyeballs in official Library business. And also apparently Quentin was just _indispensable_ as a babysitter for Alice and Julia's twenty-month-old daughter while they went off and dealt with all the aforementioned nonsense, so. Uncle Quentin was on Earth teaching an infant how to do card tricks or something.

Eliot had received an eye-roll from Quentin when he'd suggested that their friends find a fucking babysitter who actually resided on the same planet as the child in question, but he knew that Q was doing more than watching little Charlotte. He was helping. He was needed. And Eliot was proud of him, honestly. He just really goddamn hated sleeping alone.

"Eliot? Are you even listening to me?" Margo said, snapping her fingers in front of his face to get his attention.

"Mmm?"

"He's daydreaming about Q again," Josh said, genial as ever. Eliot flipped him off but didn't bother denying it.

"It's the honeymoon period, Hoberman. Don't rain on his parade," Margo said, but her grin was more mocking than sympathetic.

Fen tilted her head in curiosity. "They've been married for almost three years. Are 'honeymoon periods' supposed to last that long?"

"Maybe we're just lucky," Eliot said, sticking his tongue out at the lot of them.

One of the advisers cleared his throat awkwardly, tapping his fingers over the documents laid out on the desk. "Ahem. Your Majesties, and honored lords. Perhaps we should table the discussion and pick up again tomorrow?"

"I think that sounds like an excellent idea," Eliot said brightly, and he was on his feet and halfway to the door before Margo could contradict him.

Of course, the trouble was... as boring as that meeting had been, he didn't exactly have a more exciting alternative waiting for him. He could turn around and go back to Margo, Fen, and Josh, but he'd been hanging out with them pretty much non-stop for the past few days working on this deal, and knew that they were craving some alone time with one another. He could finish the book he was reading, or go for a walk, or maybe -

" _Ow, goddamn it, stupid fucking portal magic - "_ a voice sounded from around the corner. Eliot's posture straightened on instinct. He felt suddenly elated, unburdened by the drudgery of council meetings, as eager and giddy as a child on Christmas morning.

"Q!" He turned the corner and found Quentin sprawled somewhat awkwardly on the stone corridor, looking up angrily at a small window set into the wall several feet above ground level, out of which he had clearly just fallen. Eliot ran to him and reached a hand down to help him up, attempting to hide his growing smile. "You okay?"

"You'd think, just by like, law of averages, that just _once_ the doorway would open at ground level, with nothing blocking it, and I could just walk through like a competent Magician and not a blundering moron." Q stood with Eliot's help, brushing nonexistent dust off of his pants as he grumbled at his less-than-graceful return to Fillory.

"Oh, that's nothing," Eliot said, running his hands up Quentin's arms, checking him over for injury. He could tell from Quentin's exasperated tone that he was more annoyed than hurt. "Last time Josh tried to portal to Earth, he fell into a dumpster in an alley like thirteen blocks from the apartment. But don't tell him I told you, he swore me to secrecy."

Quentin laughed, which had been Eliot's goal. He looked up at Eliot, eyes shining bright, and his face relaxed into a fond, gentle smile. "Hey."

"Hey."

"I'm going to kiss you now," Q informed him, and then did. Eliot sighed happily and walked Quentin backwards until he was pressed against the wall right beside the aforementioned evil window. He teased at Q's lips with his tongue until they opened under the pressure, then curled their tongues together in a slow, simmering promise of more to follow.

Quentin hummed against him and pulled back slightly, hands resting on either side of Eliot's face. "I missed you."

"God, me too." Eliot grabbed Quentin's arm and started steering him down the hall towards their personal chambers. Q allowed himself to be pushed, grinning cheekily at Eliot's urgency. Eliot smirked at him. "We must be quick, little Q. We've got to get to our rooms before we're accosted by all of our dumb friends who will want to ask you stupid, irrelevant questions like 'hey, did you stop a Hedge civil war from breaking out?' or 'how's the baby? Still adorable?'"

Quentin gave him a mock glare. "So you're not going to ask me how my trip was, dear?"

"I thought I'd fuck you first," Eliot suggested lightly, "unless you have any objections?"

Quentin sped up, jerking his arm forward so he could grab Eliot's hand, taking the lead and tugging him faster down the hallway. "Well come on, then. If you insist."

Eliot laughed, gleeful and warm and light as air. By the time they reached their room, they were practically tripping over each other in their haste. Three days was way too long to be apart.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

The following morning, Eliot had woken him with a long, drawn out blowjob and then cheekily insisted that Q could pay him back later, leaving the bed while Quentin was still gasping and twitching from orgasm. Eliot had another council meeting to get to. Q was vaguely aware that he had mentioned that the night before, just as they were both drifting off into slumber. He hadn't gotten around to telling him much about his Earth excursion either, other than just the basics - yes, Hedge civil war had been averted. Yes, baby Charlie was still adorable and she was also light-years ahead of average in terms of mental acuity, something both of her mothers couldn't stop bragging about.

He supposed they'd talk more later that day, when they were done having another round of reunion sex. Quentin sighed happily and squirmed back into the blankets. He could probably go back to sleep, get a few more hours, but he was feeling light and happy and also kind of restless, so instead he got up and got dressed.

As he did so, his neck twinged slightly from when he'd fallen awkwardly out of the window yesterday. He rolled his neck and grumbled. The transport situation between Fillory and Earth was getting seriously out of hand.

For a while, the Neitherlands had been a mostly reliable method, but it had started to get overrun by cannibals again. It wasn't strictly the Library's _fault_ or anything, but there had been a buildup of magic that was throwing things out of whack. It was now considered extremely inadvisable to attempt a trip through the Neitherlands unless you were traveling with a group. And as for direct Travel, well... Penny-23 had faded almost entirely out of their lives after he and Julia had broken up nearly five years ago. It was sad, in a vague sort of way, but Q had never thought he and Jules had made a good couple in the first place. That left the imperfect, imprecise, portal spell that Margo and Alice had collaborated to create. It usually did the basics, getting a person from one place to the other, but there seemed to always be some catch. Quentin had fallen out of more cabinets and windows in the last couple of years than he could count. Sometimes, you just fell out of mid-air and landed in a fountain, or, if Josh was to be believed, a dumpster in NYC.

They'd all been brainstorming about a better way of getting from place to place, but it had never been top-priority. Their current method _usually_ worked. You _usually_ ended up approximately where you were trying to get, and if some time was lost in one direction or another, it was never more than half a day or so. Disconcerting in a way, but not actually worse than timezone changes, if you got right down to it.

Still, Quentin thought as he made his way to the Whitespire library, one would think that a group of highly accomplished Magicians who had saved the world on multiple occasions would be able to come up with a more dignified means of transport. Quentin settled himself in to go over some of his notes on this very subject. He could have crashed the council meeting with Eliot and the others, but the twinge in his neck was making him feel vengeful. He wanted to solve the damn problem once and for all, so he didn't have to risk breaking a limb every time he wanted to visit his goddaughter on Earth.

He went over some of his existing notes, coming back to a promising spell that he and Julia had worked on a few months back, the last time she’d visited him in Fillory. It was basically a modified version of what Travelers did, but instead of transporting directly from one place to another, you flickered through a kaleidoscope of different dimensions and then nudged back into existence in the place you were trying to go. Julia had compared it to Floo Powder, and in some ways Quentin could see the similarity. The hardest part was _steering_. The base circumstances were easy enough to manage, but if you were off on the exit popper even slightly, you could end up miles from where you started. It wasn’t strictly dangerous, but at the moment it was far less precise than the hit-and-miss portal spell they were already using. But it had _potential_ , if they could just figure out some of the details...

Quentin frowned down at a smudge on the notes, and then jotted down an adjustment to the circumstances. He supposed there was no way of figuring out how to tighten the range without giving it a try. And if he _did_ portal himself to Antarctica by accident, he could just portal back the old way. They had deemed those risks acceptable, if somewhat annoying.

He jotted a note in the margins - _testing spell, be right back_ \- just in case he _did_ wind up sending himself to the Sahara Desert or wherever, and then stood.

Sighing, Quentin squinted one more time at the spell and then shook his arms out and twisted his hands around in the short series of movements. Simple, straight-forward - he felt a tug against his navel, and readied himself to slip in between universes, back to Earth just for a moment. He squeezed his eyes shut, and jerked his fingers just _so_ , feeling as confident as he could be about his timing…

And then he opened his eyes. He was still in the library, exactly where he’d started. Far from traveling to the wrong place, it appeared he hadn’t even managed to move at _all_. “What the hell?” Quentin said, out loud and annoyed. He sat down again at the table and stared down at the page. He did feel _something_ , he thought - a lightness to the air around him, a tingling in his skin, but clearly the spell hadn’t taken. He huffed in frustration, glancing at the circumstances one more time before rolling his eyes and standing up. Maybe he’d send a bunny to Jules, ask her if she had time to come by and work on the spell some more. It had promise, he knew it, and he also knew that Julia, or Alice for that matter, would be able to take one look at the spellwork and point out his obvious error.

On his way to the bunny mailroom, he caught sight of Tick rushing down the hall with a sheaf of papers, muttering under his breath about something. “Hey, everything okay?” Quentin said to him as he passed by in the opposite direction. Tick always looked like there was some kind of emergency going on, even when there wasn’t, but it didn’t hurt to ask. Tick, rudely, didn’t even look up from the papers, just rushed past at a jog, heading towards the throne room.

Uh oh. Quentin changed tacks, following behind Tick more slowly, suddenly concerned. Tick had been polite to the point of sycophantic with him ever since the incident a few years back when he’d accidentally given Eliot a potion that had completely erased his love for Quentin. It had been an accident, and he’d been apologizing for it ever since, even though Quentin was long since over it. For Tick to ignore him now meant that something important was on his mind.

But when he got to the throne room, it was in time to see Tick approaching Margo, holding out the sheaf of papers in his hands. “The menu for tonight’s banquet is _all_ wrong, King Margo, and your insufferable _pet_ refuses to listen to reason.”

Quentin winced, wondering what reaction Margo would have to this less-than-flattering interpretation of Josh’s place in the palace. It was a well-gossiped topic. Technically Josh had some sort of title, but he didn’t have any actual authority, and many of the Fillorians thought of him as something of a royal bed-warmer for King Margo and Queen Fen. Josh, from what Quentin could tell, didn’t seem to mind.

Margo looked over at Eliot, who was lounging in what had once been Quentin’s throne, his legs thrown over in a rakish and remarkably attractive fashion. “I could have you beheaded for speaking about Josh that way,” Margo said to Tick, but she didn’t actually seem upset, if the crinkle around her one visible eye was anything to go by.

“But Margo, I thought you valued honesty,” Eliot said, and Margo stuck her tongue out at him.

“What’s wrong with the menu?” Quentin asked, smiling and coming forward towards two of his favorite people in the world.

“I _do_ value honesty, from people whose opinions matter,” Margo quipped back to Eliot, and he grinned at her, fond and true.

“I resent that,” Tick said, prim. “In any case, I’d advise you to take a look at the food options - ”

“We’re still recovering from this morning’s meeting,” Eliot interrupted. “There are only so many topics on which I consent to being bored out of my mind, and unfortunately, I’ve reached my daily limit.”

“I’m surprised you’re even still here to keep me company, El,” Margo said, giving him a mock sympathetic pout. “I thought you would have high-tailed it back to the hubby the second the meeting was over.”

“He’s probably still in a sex coma,” Eliot said. “He doesn’t have my enterprising spirit.”

“Um. El,” Quentin said, raising his voice and coming forward.

“It’s important to leave them wanting more,” Margo agreed sagely.

“Har har,” Quentin said, a tinge of actual annoyance creeping into his voice. “I know we talked about you discussing our sex life in front of palace staff, and as I recall - ”

But Eliot interrupted him. “Now that you mention wanting _more_ ,” Eliot said, still looking at Margo, “I suppose I should return to the man I’ve got waiting for me in my bed.”

“What - ” Quentin said, more angry than worried. “Is this some sort of weird prank? Because I don’t think - ”

“Lucky you,” Margo said, this time with an actual sigh of regret. “ _My_ man is probably elbow-deep in flour at the moment, he won’t even look at me for the rest of the day until after the food is ready.”

“It’s a good thing you’ve got my ex-wife to keep you company instead, isn’t it? An upgrade from Hoberman, if you ask me.” Eliot winked at her. Then he swung his legs over the side of the throne and stood, marching towards the door. He walked _right past_ Quentin, without even looking at him, and Quentin’s hand shot out, gripping at his elbow.

“Eliot, seriously, knock it off - ”

And it was only then that Quentin realized something was very, very wrong.

He touched Eliot - he felt the pressure of a solid object against his hand - but Eliot didn’t pause in his stride, kept moving as if Quentin’s hand wasn’t there at all. “ _E_ _liot_.”

He took a quick step after him, grabbing hard at his shoulder, but to no avail. Eliot was still moving like he hadn’t felt a thing, and Quentin realized that the touch itself felt - _wrong_. Muted, somehow, like he was pushing through pressurized air, only to find himself touching solid shadow instead of actual reality. “Eliot?” he repeated, letting his brittle terror color his tone. “El, please, can you - hear me?”

Eliot was at the door to the throne room now, and he didn’t turn around. Eliot would never walk away from Quentin when he was so clearly scared. Quentin knew that. Even so, denial clawing at his throat, he wheeled around to face Margo instead. “Margo. Fuck, Margo, can you see me?”

Margo was looking down at the menu in her hands, and then looked up, frowning at Tick. “What exactly is your problem with this menu?”

“Tick. Margo. Please, seriously, I’m freaking out,” Quentin said, and he darted a few steps forward, putting his hand on Tick’s arm. The same thing - that odd sense of unreality, like Quentin was moving under water, like everything around him was insubstantial and he was the only solid thing.

Or the reverse.

“Oh god. Oh, _fuck_. Margo. Please.”

Margo ignored him. But she wasn’t _ignoring_ him, Quentin knew. She wouldn’t do that, Tick wouldn’t do that. Not for this long, not for no discernible reason. And he’d tried to use the travel spell. He’d felt _something_ and now he… now he... 

The smart thing to do would be to rush back to the library and find his notes. And in a moment, he’d find the strength to do just that, but first he had to be sure. He had to be 100% sure that this was real, that he wasn’t going crazy. He followed Eliot back to their bedroom, instinct calling him to his husband as it so often did.

He caught up with him in time to watch Eliot enter the room and frown at the empty bed, still unmade from that morning. There would be palace servants in soon to change the sheets and make it up anew. “Q?” Eliot said, frowning as he glanced into the room’s antechamber.

“El,” Quentin said, grabbing at his arm again. He couldn’t swing him around, couldn’t use the pressure of his hand to turn him. Instead, he skittered around so he could try to look him directly in the eye. Eliot didn’t react to him in any way. “Eliot, please fucking say something. Please, I’m really scared.”

Eliot’s eyebrows were scrunched together in disappointment at finding the room empty. He walked past Quentin, might even have walked _through_ him, Quentin wasn’t quite sure, and back out into the hallway, all without saying a word. Quentin stood alone in his room, and tried to feel the blood rushing in his veins, his heart beating in his chest, air filling his lungs. All was quiet, inside and out.

He was here, but he was alone.

* * *

**ELIOT**

For the first few hours that Quentin was missing, Eliot told himself he was only mildly and reasonably concerned, and not _incredibly fucking panicked._

Because of all the work he and Quentin had done in therapy to make sure they weren't overly co-dependent, that they could live their lives both together and apart, it seemed stupidly important that Eliot not jump to conclusions. After all, it wasn't crazy to think that maybe Quentin had popped in to visit the Earth folks unexpectedly, and gotten caught up talking to an old friend along the way. And of course, despite their best efforts, a few hours were still sometimes lost here and there in the transfer between Earth and Fillory. So, there were plenty of totally non-terrifying reasons why Quentin might have suddenly vanished without warning.

Never mind the fact that Eliot knew, for a certainty, that Quentin wouldn't have gone back to Earth without telling him first. Never mind the fact that Quentin knew _exactly_ how freaked out Eliot would be if he just up and disappeared, and would never, ever have done such a thing if he'd had any say in the matter.

But there had been that one time when Eliot had been so freaked out over a "light kidnapping incident," as Quentin liked to call it, that he'd taken a potion that had erased his love for Q, and caused them both no end of heartache. And before that, there was the time when Eliot had shot the Monster at Blackspire to stop Q from giving up the rest of his life to guard it. And that had led to his possession and very nearly to his own death and Quentin's too, not to mention the destruction of the universe. So... overreacting was bad. Overreacting was also unnecessary, because even if Q _was_ in some sort of trouble, it didn't mean he couldn't handle himself.

The first thing they had done when they'd realized Q was nowhere to be found inside the castle was to send a bunny to Earth. Their missive ( _I_ _s Quentin with you?_ ) to Julia and Alice was returned instantly ( _No. Why? Everything okay?)_.

“Margo, I need you to tell me everything’s fine,” Eliot said, when the day had passed without any sign of Q. “Make me fucking believe it, because I feel like I’m about to lose my shit.”

“Everything’s fine,” Margo said, and Eliot’s hand went to his hair and tugged, hard. She hadn’t even managed to sound a little bit convincing, her lips turned down into a worried frown, her hands wringing uncertainly in front of her. “I’m sure everything’s fine.”

“He could be hurt,” Eliot said, the words scraping out of him. “What if - what if he’s _hurt_ , Margo, god, I feel like my heart is - is - ” he didn’t really have the words to describe it to her. Obviously he was scared out of his mind, had been getting steadily more and more frantic as the day went on, as he searched the palace, sent out messengers to nearby places Quentin might have traveled, received more bunnies from the Earth crowd with the fruitless results of their searches.

But it was more than simple fear. It was the absolute knowledge that he didn’t know who he was anymore without Quentin, that any sense of himself was going to fly entirely out the window if he lost - if he _lost_ \- “Fuck this. _Fuck_ this, where the fuck could he be? I need ideas.”

Margo, Fen, and Josh all looked at him uncertainly, and Eliot bit down on the urge to lash out at them. They were all in Eliot and Quentin’s chambers, the last place anyone had seen him. The other three were perched on chairs in the antechamber, eyes following Eliot as he paced around the room.

The trouble was, Eliot’s imagination didn’t even need to be very vivid for him to come up with nightmarish ideas of where Quentin might be. His mind kept conjuring scenarios wherein Quentin had been kidnapped by a band of super assassins, or had been nabbed by some sort of dangerous Fillorian monster… he could also take a leaf out of a number of books they’d already lived through in their bizarre lives. Possession, magical illness, amnesia… or what if it was something mundane, what if Quentin had slipped and hit his head and was lying under a table right now, blood seeping into the floor, life draining - 

“ _Ideas_ , please.” Eliot bit out, panic closing his throat around the words. “Anything.”

“Locator spell,” Margo said. “There are strong ones that require cooperative magic, but I know of at least one small one that will pick him up if he’s within a few miles.”

“I tried this morning,” Eliot said, waving a hand. “First thing I did when he wasn’t - when I couldn’t find him anywhere on the grounds.” He clamped his hand into a fist to stop it from shaking. “But a cooperative spell isn’t a bad idea. Are three people enough, or should we call in the Earth crew - ”

“I don’t think we’re there yet,” Margo said, gentle, and Eliot huffed out an incredulous breath.

“Nobody has seen him all day. Nobody knows where he is. My _husband_ is fucking _missing_ , Bambi. He wouldn’t do this to me, he _wouldn’t_.”

“If this were a missing person case on Earth, the police wouldn’t even let you open a file yet - ” Josh started, and Eliot whirled on him, the pressure inside of him building to a boil.

“It’s _Quentin_ ,” he snarled. “I’m. I’m going to go check the library again, you three - please just - help me. Make yourselves useful.” The unspoken truth of it was that Eliot was already unraveling, his mind skittering through every godawful thing that might have happened, that might still be happening - any remnant of rationality left to him was a vanishing resource. He needed the others to come up with something fast. It was evening, the sky already growing dark outside - if he could just find Q before night officially fell over the palace, it would all be okay. This would just be a stressful day, an incident ranking very low on the list of all the bullshit they’d already been through together.

He wasn’t going to sleep alone tonight. That was all there was to it.

“Excuse me,” a voice called out from the end of the hall, and he whirled, heart in his throat, to find Rafe waving at him. His heart leapt even higher.

“Rafe? Did you find - ”

“No,” Rafe said, grimacing in apology. Eliot wondered what his face looked like right now, as the swoop of disappointment thudded low in his gut “But I did find _this_.” He held out a sheaf of papers. “I pulled it out of a book in the library. I myself do not understand the magics of you Children of Earth, but I thought perhaps it might be relevant to your search…”

Rafe didn’t protest when Eliot rushed forward and yanked the pages out of his hand, turning about-face and marching back towards Margo and the others. Eliot didn’t have time for politeness right now, and could only hope his Fillorian colleagues would understand that. The papers were worrying in the extreme, but they were also salvation, an easy answer to what might have happened to Quentin. He scanned them eagerly, his heart squeezing at the scribbles of Quentin’s handwriting in the margins. _Be right back._ Any sign of him felt precious.

“He’s on Earth,” Eliot said, triumphant and terrified in equal measure, bursting into his room to find Margo, Fen, and Josh still sitting there exactly where he’d left them.

“Oh thank god,” Josh said, hand on his heart.

“You found him?” Fen said, jumping up and darting forward.

“No,” Eliot said. “No, not exactly, but… look.” He shoved the papers towards Margo who looked them over and then raised an eyebrow at him.

“So he must have fucked this up somehow, ended up somewhere he didn’t mean to go?”

A small burst of defensiveness crawled its way up from Eliot’s gut. “It’s a brand new spell, he probably just miscalculated slightly. He can portal back here, I’m sure he’ll turn up within the next couple of hours.”

“He shouldn’t have done this without telling anyone,” Margo said, still frowning down at the circumstances. “Assuming you’re right, he could have traveled himself to the middle of an ocean or underground or something.”

“Um. Margo,” Josh said, a gentle warning. “Maybe don’t antagonize the frantic husband right now.”

Margo looked up at Eliot, her eyes wide. “I didn’t mean - I’m sure you’re right, I’m sure Q’s fine and he’ll be back in no time at all.”

“Right,” Eliot said, teeth clenched. “Right. He’s fine.” Because that had to be the truth. It had to be. And so he sat up through the night with his friends, his brittle certainty crackling and splintering along the edges as Quentin didn’t appear, reminding himself again and again that just because he didn’t know where Quentin was _right this second_ , it didn’t have to mean the worst. It just meant Quentin was taking longer than planned to return home to him, the way he always did. The way he always would.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

During the first few days, Quentin watched Eliot unravel before his eyes, and tried not to unravel right along with him. He attempted to perform every spell he’d ever learned just to see if _any_ magic would spark in this strange shadow world he found himself in, and when that didn’t work, he found himself forced to learn the rules, so to speak, of wherever he was.

He could go wherever he wanted, touch anything he liked, but he couldn't actually affect anything in the physical world. If he picked up a pen, it felt like a strange, rubbery shadow in his hands, and when he looked down at the actual pen in question, it remained unmoving. The second he realized the unreality of the phantom pen in his hands, it would vanish. So. No reliable way of writing notes. He could touch people, too, as he'd discovered right away, but they couldn't feel it, and the touch was wrong somehow, insubstantial, like trying to feel someone's skin through a layer of malleable stone.

Everything made him tired. That was the other thing Quentin noticed about this place pretty early on. If he focused, he could go anywhere, to Alice and Julia on Earth, or to the Library, or throughout the world of Fillory, but it left him exhausted, with no recourse to solve the problem. He couldn't sleep. The bed didn't feel any more like a real object to him than anything else did. Closing his eyes only sort of worked. If he forgot to focus on being sightless, the sights of the world around him would creep back in.

And time. _Time_ worked so strangely here.

He was fairly sure it had only been four or five days, but that was based almost entirely on watching Eliot, on gauging his level of exhaustion and desperation as time passed. For Quentin himself, it sort of felt like he’d been stuck here, wherever _here_ was, forever. And also like it had just happened, like if he just shook himself out of a daze, he’d pop back into reality and his normal life.

His friends stuck with the logical theory that he’d messed up the new traveling spell, which made sense - but to Quentin’s frustration, it took them several drawn out conversations and fruitless locator spells to realize that their conclusion was faulty. Yes, Quentin _had_ messed up the spell. He _had_ , as Margo kept pointing out in increasing agitation, been an idiot for attempting it without leaving a more detailed note, or asking for help. But that didn’t mean he’d wound up in the middle of nowhere on Earth. He wasn’t on Earth. He wasn’t on Fillory. He wasn’t on some other realm altogether. He didn’t appear, exactly, to be _anywhere_.

And he had absolutely no way of conveying that to any of the people who were trying so very hard to find him.

His only strategy was to make sure he stuck close to people as they worked, so if they _did_ have some miraculous brainwave, he could act on it accordingly. How, he had no idea. He was trying not to think about it. Trying not to let the desperation swamp over him and drag him under.

At this particular moment, Eliot was with Julia and Alice, who had both come to Fillory to offer help on a large-scale locator spell, just another in the long list of similar spells they’d been trying. So far, not a single one of them had pinged Quentin as being anywhere close, even as he stood right in front of their faces, fruitlessly calling out their names.

Quentin wasn’t with Eliot, though. Josh, Margo, and Fen were together in their chambers, getting ready for a day of ruling a kingdom that was already behaving as if it was in mourning. Eliot kept snapping at Margo and the others for not doing more to help, but then was irritable and short with them when they failed to produce helpful ideas. Quentin almost wanted Eliot to be able to see what he could, here in his invisible, voyeuristic world - the way that Margo, Fen, and Josh were clearly struggling nearly as much as he was, under the weight of grief and worry. Eliot had seemingly forgotten that he wasn’t the only one who cared about Quentin. To be honest, as much as every single thing about this situation sucked, Quentin was slightly gratified to realize just how true that was, how much his entire network of friends loved him.

“If he’s on Earth,” Margo said, fixing her hair in the mirror while Fen zipped up her dress for her, “he’s actively hiding, or else that last locator attempt should have pinned him.”

“Or someone’s actively hiding _him,_ ” Fen said. “Or maybe it has nothing to do with those notes we found in the library at all. Maybe… oh, I don’t know. My brain hurts from thinking so much about this.”

"At this point," Josh said, wandering over to the mirror and studying the line of his collar in the glass over Margo’s head, "I'm just scared we're going to be sent a box, and we're going to open it up and there's going to be a finger or an ear in it or something - _ow_." He glared at Margo, who had just smacked him, hard.

"Fucking Hell, Josh, you can’t say shit like that anywhere outside of this room. Do you want Eliot to hear you?"

Josh looked at Margo like she was a total idiot, which, honestly, was pretty brave. Quentin certainly never would have dared. "Margo," he said slowly. "Do you think that possibility hasn't occurred to Eliot? Do you really think he's not running every possible nightmare scenario through his head in a loop? He's petrified."

Margo frowned, biting her lip. “I’m petrified too. I’m trying to prepare myself for how it’s going to feel if we’re forced to give up hope.”

“Eliot won’t let us give up,” Fen said. “And I won’t let us either.” Her spine straightened, stubbornness tightening the line of her jaw. “It’s been less than a week.”

“And if Quentin were alive, and safe, and capable, he’d be here right now,” Josh said. “I’m not - ” he cut himself off with a quiet sigh. “I love the guy, I do, and if he’s… if he’s not okay… fuck, it’d be devastating. But Q can’t be your only focus. The two of you have a kingdom to run, and I don’t think that’s the kind of thing that can really be put on hold.”

Again, Quentin marveled at Josh’s unique ability to talk to Margo like that without the consequence of instant death. Margo didn’t look angry at Josh; she seemed to realize, just as much as Quentin himself did, that Josh had a point.

“So let’s go do that, then,” Margo said. “Let’s go to our morning meetings, and let Eliot focus on Quentin. We’ll let Fen take the afternoon counsel meeting and help with the locator spell once Julia and Alice have it set up.”

This sensible plan in place, they exited the room, with Quentin trailing silently and automatically behind them. He’d been with them all morning, after staying up through the night with Eliot. The truth was, it was flat-out torture to watch Eliot suffer with absolutely no recourse to comfort him. He was with Eliot most of the time, instinct and fear keeping him close, but sometimes, as guilty as it made him feel, he needed a break.

It was later that afternoon that Alice and Julia had their Major Locator Spell ready. It involved cooperative casting - the two of them, Eliot, Margo, and Josh were all going to participate.

“And this will work,” Eliot was saying to Alice, as Quentin entered the room, trailing after Margo and Josh. “With accuracy, right? It’ll pinpoint - ”

“The circumstances are all written out,” Alice said, distracted and dismissive as she hunted down a specific piece of paper in her stack of notes. “You can take a look at them if you don’t believe me.”

“You know I’m not capable of understanding half the shit you and Julia worked out on this thing,” Eliot said, unnecessarily snippy. “I just - ”  
“Need some basic reassurance,” Julia interrupted, chewing on her lip. “Alice isn’t good at understanding other people’s feelings.” She shot a glare at her wife, her eyes bright with exhaustion and unshed tears. She looked nearly as worn down as Eliot.

Alice didn’t even look up from her notes, making a few last minute adjustments to the bounds of the spell. Quentin felt oddly fond of all of them in that moment - of Alice, for being so practical and cold in the face of a project, and of Julia and Eliot for their overtly emotional and frustrated response to that same vital pragmatism.

“There’s no need to fight, children,” he said, smiling at the three of them. “I’m right here, just… work on figuring that out for me.”

“I’m not looking to be coddled,” Eliot said, turning his exhausted, furious eyes on Julia. “I’m looking for _answers_.”

“Sure,” Julia said, rolling her eyes. “And the fact that you haven’t slept through the night once since Quentin disappeared has nothing to do with your attitude.”

“Don’t start,” Alice snapped, finally looking up from the page in her hands and glaring at them both.

“We all love him,” Margo put in, entering the room and interrupting the squabbling. “We all love him, we’re all scared, and we all want him back. It’s not a goddamn competition. Let’s just do the fucking spell, okay?”

“Go Margo!” Quentin said, indulging in his need for human touch by placing a hand on her shoulder. It felt all wrong, as usual, but he couldn’t quite stop himself from trying.

As the five of casters formed a circle around the bowl of ingredients that Julia and Alice had prepared, Quentin took up residence between Eliot and Julia. It was bizarre to stand this close to them without feeling the warmth of their bodies, the way their physical forms disturbed the air around them. Quentin felt solid, usually - right now, it was everyone else who felt unreal, unsubstantial.

The spell was gorgeous - a modified version of one they’d already tried just the day after Quentin had vanished. Julia and Alice had put their heads together and changed it to expand its scope, so that it could reach all corners of the known multi-verse, even dipping into other realms like the Fairy Realm.

Quentin had high hopes. The Fairy Realm felt like the closest comparison to what he was going through here, although he had yet to see anyone else who appeared to be sharing the same displaced space. He was alone, as far as he could tell. And also as far as he knew, magic was possible in the Fairy Realm. Here, his magic was useless.

And yet, as the magic started to coalesce and grow between his five friends, the bowl of ingredients, which was meant to glow when Quentin was found, remained stubbornly dull. They cast for a long time, looping through the words and moving their hands in the dance of a beautiful set of tuts, but nothing happened.

Alice was the first to give it up, letting her hands drop to her sides as yet another repetition ended with no sign of success. The others stopped shortly after, staring around at each other in mounting horror.

Quentin moved to face Eliot, looking up into his eyes as he looked around at Alice and Julia. “What happened?” he said, rough and scared. His hands were shaking, and Quentin started to reach for one by instinct, but then it flew up and into Eliot’s curls, tugging hard. “What - why didn’t it work? This one was supposed to _work_.”

Alice looked over at Julia, and the two women just stared at each other for a long moment, solemn and sad.

“I’m right here,” Quentin said, desperate.

“But. Um.” Eliot paused, shaking his head hard like he was trying to clear something from it. He turned to Alice. “But you said - you _said_.”

“Eliot, I’m so sorry,” Josh muttered, a grimace of discomfort on his face. He brought a hand up to brush through his own short hair, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else in the world.

“You’re sorry?” Eliot said. “You’re - what the fuck does that - ”

“I’m _here_ ,” Quentin said, louder this time, marching away from Eliot and towards Josh. “I’m right _here_ , why can’t any of you fucking _see me_?”

He had a sudden moment of horrified appreciation for what Penny must have gone through when he had died, seeing everything and yet forever unseen. If only that damn key could have helped them here, as well as it had back then.

“God _damn_ it,” Quentin shouted, as loud as he could, whirling in a circle to take in the various expressions of grief on the faces of his friends. “Fucking _look at me_.”

He wasn’t even sure what he was aiming for, what he was hoping to accomplish. Was he hoping to sooth Eliot, who couldn’t see or hear him? To convince Josh to stop looking at Eliot like that, with awkward and uncertain sympathy? Or, as everyone in the room began to shift into grief, to process the implications of their failure… maybe he just needed to remind himself of his own reality, to convince himself that he _was_ right here, that he was real, substantial, _alive_.

Even if nobody else seemed to believe it anymore.

* * *

**ELIOT**

Eliot knew what Josh meant. He knew what the look on everyone else’s faces meant. He refused it, outright, as an utter impossibility.

"So," Eliot said, his throat tight but determined around the words. "So he's not in Fillory, then. We - we have to try again on Earth, and maybe - "

Alice shook her head, her skin even paler than usual. "Eliot. This spell encompasses all of the known realms. The Library, the Neitherlands... the only thing it doesn't touch is the Underworld, because they block access to their inhabitants' specific whereabouts. He's. He's not anywhere."

"Don't," Eliot said. Warned. He really wasn't sure what he was going to do if Alice finished that thought to its natural progression. " _Don't_. He's not. He's _not_. He must be somewhere else. Somewhere we don't know about."

"El," Margo said, using her placating voice.

" _Don't_ ," he repeated, whirling to face her instead. "We try something else. We keep looking."

"If Quentin could be here, he _would_ be," Julia said. Eliot hated her in that moment. He hated her because she was right, and because he could see how devastated she was, her arms curled around herself, her words choked with tears. She was grieving for Quentin, and that was un-fucking-acceptable.

"If you all want to just give up on him, be my guest, but it hasn’t even been a week," Eliot said. "A _week_. If you think I'm throwing up my hands that quickly then you - you're all a bunch of - " he couldn't think of a word bad enough. He didn't really think he wanted to say it, even if he _could_ think of it.

"Nobody's giving up," Margo said. "I promise you, El. You're right. It's not long enough for us to just stop looking."

Eliot thought about explaining to her that there was no length of time that would be _long enough to stop looking_. Not for him. But he didn't have the energy to say it. He'd keep looking for the rest of his life, he knew. But even thinking the thought was like admitting to the possibility that he'd never see Quentin again. Just the idea of it was enough to turn him numb, his body locking down in some sort of instinctive defense mechanism.

"So what's next?" he asked, ignoring the way Alice had gone to wrap her arms around Julia. He could tell both of the girls were crying. Josh hadn't said another word, just stood looking down at his feet in a despondent sort of way. Fuck all of them. "So _what's next_?" he yelled.

Julia drew in a shaky breath. The sight of tear-tracks on her face was - it was _infuriating_. “We’ll - go back to Earth,” she said, turning to look at Eliot with wobbling lips and red eyes. “We’ll hit the books, okay? Keep looking for some sort of explanation.”

“It’s useless,” Alice said, shaking her head, and Eliot saw red, taking a lunging step towards her without meaning to.

“ _S_ _top crying_.”

“Stop yelling at her,” Julia said. “Just fucking _stop_ , Eliot, you’re not the only one grieving - ”

“I’m not _grieving_ because he’s not _dead_ ,” Eliot yelled, and just the sound of that word - _dead_ \- said aloud for the first time, was like a punch to the solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him and lingering in the room like an echo. Dead. Dead, dead, dead.

Nobody spoke for a long moment, and then Eliot shook his head again, yanking his hands through his hair. His curls had gone limp and frizzy, and he didn’t care even a little bit. “Go back to Earth, and contact me if you find something actually _useful_.” He avoided Margo’s admonishing eyes as he stormed his way out of the room. “I’m going to - I need to go rest my eyes for a minute.”

He thought someone might follow him - Margo, most likely - but nobody did, and he wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. He didn’t, of course, go to his room, with his empty bed that he could hardly stand to look at.

Everything in him was screaming for Quentin. It was beyond grief, or the simple act of _missing_ him - it was - a physical thing, an itching in his fingers, a ringing in his ears. Until he knew that Quentin was safe, until he could touch him again, Eliot didn’t know how he was supposed to keep breathing.

He thought about going to the library, to the table where Quentin had sat doing his research on the portal spell. It was the last place any of them could be sure Quentin had been, before he vanished. The actual notes and books he had been looking at weren’t there anymore - those were back on Earth, where Julia and Alice had been studying the spell, and at least one sheet with Quentin’s handwriting was with Kady, so she could chase down some leads among her hedge contacts.

But to stand there, where Quentin had been - it felt like a connection. The kind he could stand, unlike being alone in their room. That he couldn’t do. He’d been sleeping, or at least losing consciousness for brief moments, in one of the guest chambers for the past week.

He didn’t make it to the library, however - Fen waylaid him in the corridor instead. “Eliot?”

“Not in the mood to talk right now,” Eliot said, trying to keep his voice even. “Margo will fill you in.”

“I just came from there,” Fen said, rushing up behind him and putting a hand on Eliot’s elbow. “I’m so _sorry_ , Eliot - ”

“Would everyone stop fucking saying that?” Eliot said, snarling, his control snapping lightning-fast. He wrenched his arm away from Fen’s grasp, whirling to face her. “There’s nothing to be - Quentin’s _not dead_.”

Fen took a small step back in shock, but then blinked, her eyes growing steely as she looked up at him. “I didn’t say he was.”

“You said you were _sorry_.” The word felt like a curse, like a cruelty. Why couldn’t anyone else see that?

“Because you’re in pain,” Fen said simply, like this was all there was to it. “Eliot, come with me.”

And despite the fact that Eliot still really wasn’t in the mood to talk to anyone other than the one person he couldn’t talk to, he found himself following, responding instinctively to the command in her tone.

They wound up in an antechamber that Eliot could have sworn he’d never seen before, one of the generic seating areas squirreled away to fill space in this wing of the castle. He supposed some lady in waiting had once used it to entertain her fellows, or maybe it was where the servants came to fool around when they were on duty. Fen marched straight over to a big cushy chair and then pointed down at it, silently ordering Eliot to sit. She took a seat on the footstool in front of him, looking up at him with beseeching eyes.

“I really can’t imagine what you’re going through,” she said. “I’ve suffered my fair share of loss, though, and I thought I might offer you some advice.”

Eliot was silent. He couldn’t imagine a single thing that Fen could say to him that could possibly help. But if it made her feel better to offer…

“I think you should try… _talking_ to Quentin. Even though he’s not here with you. I did it a lot with… with our baby, you know?”

Even the mention of the child he’d never gotten to meet, and the grief he knew Fen still carried with her, wasn’t enough to stop the anger from boiling out of him. He couldn’t fucking believe her. “I’m not talking to - Quentin is not fucking dead, Fen, I thought we’d covered this.” He made to stand up and stalk out, but Fen was faster, darting forward out of her seat and crowding him back down into the chair.

“You know what, Eliot?” she snapped, suddenly fierce. “Once again, I didn’t say that he _was_. But he’s not _here_ right now. Whether you believe it or not, I’m actually trying to help you. And so is Margo, and so are Alice and Julia. You’re not the only person who loves him, you know.”

“He’s my husband,” Eliot said. It didn’t fucking matter that she was right. He had no room inside of him to feel anything close to sympathy, or regret, or compassion for anyone else’s fucking feelings.

“Yeah,” Fen said, her voice soft but her tone brooking no argument. “And you were my husband once, Eliot. And when I thought you were dead, I talked to you a _lot_. And even though it turned out you weren’t really gone, and you came back to me… it still helped, telling you how I felt when you weren’t around to hear it.”

Leave it to Fen. Jesus Christ. As if he didn’t have enough reasons to feel like shit right now.

“Fen, I don’t - ”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Fen interrupted. “Just maybe stop attacking people for trying to help you.”

For a moment after that, they sat in silence, as Eliot tried to unstick the cement in his throat. He wanted Quentin so bad. It was hard, even chastised as he was, to feel properly guilty for the way he’d behaved. He couldn’t even summon the energy for a true apology.

“How does - how does talking - help?” he finally asked, halting and exhausted down to his molecules.

And Fen smiled at him, and came to sit squished against his side in the chair, a solid small presence against his side.

She wasn’t Quentin. She wasn’t even close. But it was something.


	2. Chapter Two

**QUENTIN**

The passage of time was Quentin’s worst enemy. Sometimes, he blinked and days had passed. Sometimes, he watched Eliot toss and turn on a bed that wasn’t his own, and one of his near-sleepless nights seemed to last weeks. Quentin’s body didn’t seem to be feeling any physical effects of time passing. He was never hungry, or physically fatigued. Didn’t need to shave, or drink water, or rest his legs. He felt trapped in stasis, but also like he was the only real thing living in a world of shadow.

Usually, he had to wait until someone mentioned the date out loud, to be certain of it. He’d recently heard Josh make a comment about _three weeks_ , which felt… well, both like no time at all, and like way too much fucking time. Three weeks where nobody knew where he was, or what had happened to him. Three weeks, in which some of his friends seemed to have accepted the grim inevitability that he was never coming back (Alice, Margo), and during which others, Eliot especially, had dug their heels in, resisting even the suggestion of such a thing.

And it meant three weeks of following Eliot around, watching the circles beneath his eyes grow deeper and deeper, watching him forget to eat, watching the stubble grow dark and scraggly against an increasingly gaunt jaw.

It was torture. And even as he knew nobody had _truly_ given up, even as he knew that both on Filloy and on Earth, everyone was still searching for answers, it really was starting to feel like there was no way out of this. He’d be doomed to live here for eternity, his body stuck in amber, as the people he loved aged and died around him. Talk about a fucking nightmare scenario.

Eventually, Eliot moved back into their bedroom. He didn’t sleep any better for it, but he seemed to be clinging to whatever he could, curling around Quentin’s pillow at night, crying quietly into the darkness. Alone, but not alone, because Quentin couldn’t - he couldn’t fucking stand to see him like this, but he also couldn’t bear the thought of being anywhere else.

And then one night - “Quentin.” Eliot’s voice was barely more than a whisper, as he sat on the edge of their bed, his face starkly shadowed in the flickering light of a single candle on the bedside table. “Fen told me I should talk to you.”

At the sound of his name in Eliot’s voice, Quentin startled, whirling to face him. “El.”

“It sounds completely moronic to me,” Eliot said. “But I kind of feel like I’m gonna die if I don’t try something. And I can’t talk to anyone else. I’ll punch anyone who gives me the whole sympathy run-around one more time.”

“Eliot?”

Eliot wasn’t looking at him, just down at his hands, and the brief flicker of hope that Quentin had felt died away. This wasn’t Eliot suddenly able to see him, or sense him. This was just… Eliot, trying to process his grief. And Quentin was going to have to stand there and watch it.

Shit. Quentin wished his body could remember how to be a body. He felt like throwing up.

“It seems completely pointless to just talk into the void, but also, I suppose it can’t hurt,” Eliot said, eyes glazed, voice soft. “I’m so angry, you know? I’m so fucking angry. It’s not _fair_ , Q. I mean, god knows I’ve never deserved you, but what the fuck did I do that’s so bad, to deserve _this_?”

Quentin swallowed against the urge to answer him. He had some experience, by now, on how badly it sucked to talk and get no response at all. Instead, he came around to stand facing Eliot, leaning against the wall by the dresser, his arms crossed and hands bunched up into fists. He wanted to scream. He could have, he supposed. Nobody would have heard it, anyway.

“If you were here,” Eliot said, cutting through the quiet dark of the room. His hands were shaking, his voice weak and high. “If - if you were - I just miss the sound of your voice. I want to hear you talk to me. About anything, Q, _anything_ \- I - ” He cut himself off, swallowing and shaking his head, his jaw bunching up under the stubble.

God fucking damnit. What had _Quentin_ done, to deserve this kind of hell?

"If you were here," Eliot repeated, and Quentin had to close his eyes for a moment, tight against the pain of hearing him like this. "If you were here, I'd - I'd put my hands in your hair, the way you like. I'd touch you everywhere. I'd hold you - I -god, Q. I miss your mouth. I'd kiss you. I'd just kiss you for hours and - Fuck. I miss you. _Fuck._ I feel like I'm losing my mind. I miss you so much it's like there's not room in me to feel anything else anymore."

Quentin waited for a long moment, watched as Eliot lowered his face into his hands, heard the labored breaths, the wet sounds of crying. Jesus _fuck_ this could not be happening. He tried to think, willed his brain to come up with some miraculous new idea, some way he could make Eliot know he was here, but he came up blank as always. Like a moth to a flame, Q walked forward, and raised a hand to touch his husband. Just a hand on his shoulder, the brush of incorporeal flesh against the cloth of Eliot's shirt. It felt as strange as it always did, a lifeless echo, like touching cold ceramic, or glass, instead of reality. Touching him like this was always worse than not touching him at all. But Q could never resist it for long.

"Please, just..." Eliot said. "Please be okay. I'd ask you to come back to me, but I know that if you could, you'd be here. That's what scares me more than anything."

"I'm here, El," Quentin said. "I'm right here. I'm trying every second to get to you. Please believe that."

It felt like rejection, to be constantly unheard. A rejection from the universe itself, some sign from beyond himself that he wasn't allowed to have peace. If he couldn't even ease Eliot's pain, what the hell was he good for?

"Q," Eliot said again, his voice cracking. "Q, you made me so happy. I don't know - I should have told you that more. I'm afraid that I didn't say it enough." He hiccuped a few times and then wiped his eyes. He seemed to catch himself talking in the past tense then, and he went rigid all over, scrubbing his hands over his face in a quick, hard motion. "When you're back, I'll say it. I'll say it all the time, until you get sick of it, and I won't stop even then."

"Jesus," Quentin said, sinking to the floor next to the bed. "Jesus, El." There didn't seem to be anything else to say. And in any case, it would be pointless to try. Eliot was lucky, in some sick way, even though he wasn’t aware of it. He wasn't actually speaking into the void. He had no idea his words could be heard, but they _could_ be, and if Quentin ever got out of here, he'd tell Eliot as much. 

Quentin, on the other hand? Nothing. He could talk to Eliot for the rest of eternity, and he’d never be heard. If a tree falls in a forest, and nobody’s around to hear it... what the fuck does it matter?

He’d thought he’d known, before this, what it meant to be alone. He’d been wrong.

* * *

_Two Months Later_

**ELIOT**

Routines asserted themselves even in the most agonizing of circumstances. Days and weeks and months went by, and even though Eliot felt every goddamn second of the time without Quentin, even though the worry never stopped clawing its way up his throat, the pain never stopped sticking needles behind his eyes, some sense of normalcy did return to his life.

He slept in his own bed, waking up from a restless night of tossing and turning and _wanting_. He talked to Quentin when he was alone, still uncertain if saying his thoughts out loud was more painful than keeping it all inside. He researched. He checked in with Alice and Julia. He bit his tongue raw trying to hold back his outrage and pain whenever he heard back from them that there was no news. He hid his resentment of Margo, Fen, and Josh and their seemingly peaceful domesticity. He researched some more. He talked to Quentin some more. He ate, if someone reminded him. He usually ended up yelling at someone who didn’t deserve it. And then he crawled, weak and bone-weary into his bed at night, cold and aching and so fucking _sad_ , and he’d try to get his brain to shut up for a few hours, so he could wake up in the morning and do it all over again.

He couldn’t give up hope. The second he admitted, even to himself, that Quentin might never come back, he’d - he’d crumple, inside and out, like a puppet with its strings cut. The tense, brittle, razor-thin line of hope was the only thing keeping him upright. He knew it, and the people who loved him knew it too.

He tried to remind himself that it wasn’t anyone else’s fault, that he was falling apart. That he couldn’t begrudge the fact that the other people in his life were able to keep going on, could miss Quentin but still get up in the morning, still look forward to things, still _want_ things, other than just the thrumming and ever-present need for Q’s return. It wasn’t always easy.

“I was hoping,” Margo said to him one morning, her voice annoyingly conciliatory and gentle, “if you wanted to come to our council meeting today.”

Eliot bit back on his first biting response, and went with his second, hardly any better. “I don’t think I’ll be much use to you.”

“El, honey - ”

“I can’t, Margo. I’m - I’ve got research to do.”

“Do you actually, though?” Margo said, reaching a hand out and touching his arm. “Because if you’re just looking for answers because you think you _should_ be, then maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to take a break - ”

“Are you serious right now?” Eliot asked, genuinely incredulous. “What, you think this is all just - obligation, for me?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You have no idea what this is like, okay? I can’t go to a goddamn council meeting with you and pretend to give a shit. I just don’t have it in me.”

Margo’s expression flickered with hurt before she smoothed it away. “I just thought maybe I could get your mind off of things, for a while.”

It was such a stunningly obtuse thing to say, that for a moment Eliot could only stare at her, wondering when the fuck his best friend had stopped knowing him. But there was something in Margo’s expression, a hesitance, that told Eliot he was missing something. He shook his head, and, for whatever stupid reason, found himself trying to explain what she already should have known.

"I used to forget, you know," he said. "Every morning. Just for a few seconds, I'd wake up, and I'd think - I'd think he was just in the next room. Remembering the truth always hurt worse than anything, but it was still worth it, for those moments between waking and sleeping. It was like I could feel him. I knew he was about to walk back in the door. Sometimes it was even like he - he was in the bed with me." Eliot coughed, trying to clear the tightness in his throat. Most of the time he thought he was past the point of crying, but it could still sneak up on him sometimes. "That doesn't happen anymore. I never forget, not even when I'm asleep. I wake up calling for him, but I know he's not going to be there."

Margo was silent for a long moment. When she spoke, she sounded severe, like if she let up for even a second, she'd be crying too. "You know Q wouldn't want you to be this miserable."

"No shit," Eliot said. "Of course he wouldn't. He loves me, for some crazy reason." He turned to look at Margo, schooling his expression into blankness. "You know, Bambi, that's what you say to someone when their loved one has died. That they wouldn't want you to be so broken up about it."

"El."

"Don't. Just - don't, Margo. We don't know."

"You're right," Margo said. "You're _right_ , El, we don't. But maybe we could find out."

"What does that even mean?"

"I - sort of had an ulterior motive, asking you to come to the meeting today.”

“You don’t fucking say.”

“It’s just - I know you have your check-in with the Earth crowd later this morning, and - ” she paused, coughing, and Eliot fought the urge to shake the words out of her. “So I was talking with Alice, and she said - well, she might be able to reach out to the Underworld branch, and - and see if he's..." she trailed off. Maybe because of the expression on Eliot's face. Vaguely, he wondered what he looked like. He knew what he felt like, though - like he was going to throw up.

"You mean... we could. We could um. Know for sure that he's not dead," he said. _Shit_ , he was not going to fall apart again right now. He was no good to Quentin as a sobbing mess.

"Right," Margo said, and then hesitated and continued. "Or, you know, we could know for sure... either way."

"Shut the fuck up," he said, without heat. He didn't want to be angry with Margo, on top of everything else. But the implication of what she was saying, that somehow it would help if he knew for sure that Quentin was fucking _dead_ , was... well, it was goddamn rage inducing, and he couldn't deny that.

"Eliot."

"Margo."

"I was hesitant to tell you about this, because... well, you're going to have to face the possibility that if we go looking for Quentin in the Underworld, we might actually find him."

"Yeah, I got that, thanks," Eliot said, brittle and angry.

"Eliot, it's been months," Margo said.

"Are you under the apprehension that I don't _know_ that?" Eliot hissed. "That I don't know _exactly_ how long it's been since I've seen and touched him? Because believe me, I've got a pretty crystal clear understanding on that front."

"I'm sorry," Margo said.

"Sorry doesn't do anything for me." He sighed at the shock of hurt on Margo's face, and tried to return to some measure of pragmatic control. "But this plan, this idea of Alice's - it's something, right? I didn't think it was possible to track someone down in the Underworld. Isn't that what Alice said?"

"Not through official channels, it's not, but Alice is going to call in a favor with Penny."

Eliot quirked an eyebrow in confusion, but then widened his eyes. "Oh. _Our_ Penny, you mean. Huh."

"Apparently there are a lot of messy politics involved," Margo said, waving a hand dismissively, "but Alice thinks she has enough clout to pay Penny a visit and see the rosters."

See the rosters. And search for the name Quentin Coldwater on those rosters. Eliot's stomach swooped, and he suddenly wished he was sitting down. Instead, he clenched his fists at his sides. "So when do we leave?"

Margo shook her head, pursing her lips. "You're not going. Alice and Kady are. And... they already left."

"Margo," he growled, incensed. "How the fuck could you let them - "

"Because your head is not on right. Because if you went down there and found out that Quentin was _dead_ , you might never have come back up!"

He had never before in his entire life felt this amount of rage, especially not towards Margo. It was stunning in its impact, in the way it zinged energy through his body, made him want to lash out, break something, _scream_. This was a path towards Quentin, and she was barring him from it.

"God, Margo, he's my husband! I should be going with them - that was _not_ your fucking call to make!"

"Like hell it isn't!" Margo spat. "Quentin made me promise I'd look after you - "

"What are you _talking_ about?"

Margo's face had gone pale and bloodless. She sighed rubbing a hand hard across her forehead, and Eliot saw for the first time that she’d lost the battle against tears, a few of them dropping down her cheeks even as she fought to maintain control. "When you were hit with that Fragmenting curse. Before the two of you left to go track down the Mermaids."

Eliot just blinked at her, feeling a cold ball of dread in his stomach. "Margo."

"He pulled me aside, and told me that if he didn't come back, I had to make sure you didn't do anything stupid. He was - he was prepared to give his life up for yours, Eliot. He thought it might be the only way, and he had made his peace with that. You can't repay that kind of sacrifice by - "

"Bullshit," Eliot hissed. "I don't give a fuck about repaying sacrifices or whatever the fuck, and neither do you. What you're really asking me here is if I'm going to kill myself if it turns out Q's dead."

He hadn't said the words out loud, next to each other like that, in weeks. They were shaped strangely, angular and harsh in his throat - _If it turns out Q's dead, turns out Q's dead, Q's dead, Q's dead, dead, dead._ Impossible. Impossible to contemplate. Absurd in every way. Too much.

Margo looked at him, steady, with tears streaming down both of her cheeks. "Well? Are you?"

"No," Eliot said instantly. "No, I won't. But I'm going to want to, and I'm not going to get better."

"El," Margo said, her lip trembling.

"And if he's down there," Eliot swallowed. "I'll try and get him back."

"That's the same fucking thing as suicide - " Margo started fiercely, but Eliot just snorted at her and turned away, biting back his anger.

"We can argue over semantics later, Margo. Just call me when Alice gets back." And he stormed away before he could burn any more bridges.

* * *

It was four days later that Alice and Kady showed up, rushing unannounced into Margo’s chambers one evening. Eliot, coerced by Fen into keeping company with the others instead of going to bed alone like he usually did, was slumped against Margo on one of the ornate couches in their elaborate antechambers. He and Margo hadn’t talked about their last conversation, falling back into the old and harmful habit of pretending nothing at all was broken between them. He resented Fen and the others for caring so much, but at least this was something he could do to keep his friends from worrying about him. Sometimes, in rare moments, that was something he still cared about.

Alice entered first, with Kady hot on her heels, their faces flushed and their breathing coming hard. Wherever they’d portaled from, they’d clearly run here to talk to them. Despite his best efforts to keep his expectations in check, Eliot’s heart immediately began to race, his limbs vibrating with painful hope and dread in equal measure. He stood, taking an unsteady step towards them.

"Did you - " Eliot swallowed. "Did you find - anything?"

He couldn't understand the expressions on their faces. There was a grimness there, a set to Kady's shoulders that didn't seem like good news, maybe the lingering of tear tracks on Alice's face, if he looked close enough. And nobody was talking. Nobody was saying anything. _Fuck no. God. Just... no._

"Please just say it," Margo spat out, coming to stand beside Eliot. She took his hand and squeezed it hard, hard enough that Eliot felt his bones sliding around under the skin. He was going to think about that, and not about the other thing. He heard the sounds of Fen and Josh springing to their feet as well, where they’d been cuddled up together on the divan.

"We... okay. Listen," Alice said, her voice warbling. "We - we found him."

It couldn't be true. It couldn't be. Eliot was not supposed to be breathing. His heart was not supposed to be beating. The pain was blinding. Sharp, physical, crackling the air around him like lightning. His skin felt stretched tight against him, a dry, unnatural thing. He wanted to burst forth from it and float away, as if an escape from the physical world would somehow end his pain.

" _No_ ," Eliot said. Or - he thought he probably said it. He heard the word, anyway, echoing around and through him, and felt his legs buckle, the sharp pain of his knees hitting the thinly carpeted floor. It didn't hurt nearly, _nearly_ as much as he needed it to. "Jesus god, _no_."

"Eliot," someone said, but the blood pounding in Eliot's ears was too loud for him to tell who it was. There were hands on his arms, people crouched on either side of him, but he'd gone numb. He hadn't let himself think it. He hadn't let himself believe, _truly_ believe, for even one second that Quentin could be dead, because then he'd -

"Quentin's _not dead_ ," a voice said, low and fierce in his ear. It sounded different from the aching, wordless denial echoing in his own brain, so he made an effort to turn his head and see who had spoken.

Alice was there, her eyes blazing with determination. She grabbed his face between her hands and stared him down until Eliot looked back at her. There was a wetness in his eyes that made her face blurry, but he blinked a few times, releasing the tears until she came into focus. "He's not dead, okay? He's not in the Underworld. Or, at least, he's not entirely there."

"What the fuck - what does that mean?" Margo asked, which was good, because Eliot wasn't sure he could speak.

"We think he's trapped in between worlds," Kady said, crouching down next to Alice so she was on a level with Eliot.

"I'm sorry," Alice said. "I'm sorry - I'm so stupid, I didn't mean to scare you like that."

"He's not dead?" Eliot asked. He was still crying. He couldn't stop.

"No. He's not. Penny said - " Kady's voice cracked, and she cleared her throat, setting her jaw in an angry line before continuing. "Penny said that Q was definitely not dead, not properly dead anyway, but that he had been - _flickering_ , I guess you could say, in and out between this plane of existence and the Underworld, basically in his very own pocket universe."

"He's not dead," Eliot repeated. He couldn't seem to make himself understand anything else Kady was saying, just let the words fill him up with comfort and solace. _Not dead, not dead, not dead_. Which meant the same thing as _alive, alive, alive_. "I'm - What - What do we do. What - do I do? How - "

His breathing was loud and ragged in his own ears. Margo's hand was rubbing up and down his back, and Alice had a hand on the side of his face, trying to tilt him so they could make eye contact again.

“We find him, Eliot,” Alice said, sounding as cool and confident as anything. “We find him, whatever it takes, and we bring him back to us.”

* * *

**QUENTIN**

Quentin had debated whether he should go with Kady and Alice to the Underworld, or stay in Fillory with Eliot and the others. There wasn't a whole lot he could do in either case, of course. The Underworld felt like a step - progress of a sort. But was it really? All it would do is tell them that Quentin wasn't dead. It would eliminate one option off of an endless list of possibilities. He knew, more or less, what had happened to him, but he had absolutely no clue how to fix it. And he certainly couldn't alert anyone to the issue.

But in the end, his mental exhaustion kept him in Fillory while the women made their trip. It was getting harder and harder to focus on the passage of time and stay present in the reality of life. If he let his attention drift, sometimes he'd find days had passed without his feeling it at all. The last time he'd tried to travel away from Fillory, from the place of his - well, not _death_ , because he refused to think that way, but his _dis-corporation,_ anyway, it had been in an effort to attend Charlie's second birthday party. It had been a decidedly cheerless affair, with Eliot sitting despondently in the corner while Julia and Alice tried to put on a chipper attitude for their daughter. He'd been so exhausted upon returning to Fillory afterwards that he'd let his attention wander and snapped back to focus over a week later, just in time to watch another agonizing scene of Eliot crying his eyes out while Fen tried, fruitlessly, to offer him comfort.

So, traveling to the Underworld Branch of the Library had seemed not only pointless, but risky. Quentin wasn't sure how much longer he was going to be able to hold on to his tenuous grasp with the land of the living. Sometimes it was even hard to remember why he was bothering at all.

Sometimes he thought it might be nice to drift, to let time pass him by, detach himself from the remnants of life and just stop _trying_ so hard.

And then he'd catch sight of the dark circles under Josh's eyes, or he'd find Julia and Alice crying in each other's arms, or Margo screaming out her frustration into a pillow. He'd find Eliot, haunted, hollow, thin and fading, pain etched into every line of his face and body. And Quentin would find the desperate strength to keep fighting.

He knew why Alice and Kady had decided to make the trip, and why Margo and Julia had supported it. For them, it was closure, a chance to confirm once and for all what they already believed. That Quentin was dead, and that they all needed to move on. He didn’t resent them for the impulse. If he _had_ been dead, he would have wanted to grant his loved ones the peace of knowing what had happened, at the very least.

And now this - his friends, returned from their dangerous journey, giving Eliot the news in a stunningly tactless matter that had been legitimately horrible to watch.

Eliot had been - the way he'd looked, just - inconsolable, like his heart was being torn right out of him. Quentin had stood there, right in front of the love of his life, as Eliot had collapsed, the expression on his face almost disbelieving, like he couldn't quite grasp the amount of horror he was experiencing. Quentin had felt a sharp, intense anger at Alice for putting Eliot through that, for even one moment. Why hadn't she said it the other way around? Why hadn't she _started_ with the good news, damn it?

It felt oddly cleansing, this anger and grief. It was a sharp enough emotion to bring him fully into alignment with himself, to feel the passage of time and know who and where and when he was with a certainty that was becoming extremely difficult to maintain.

And now they knew - despite the anger, it was better than Quentin could have hoped for. Not only did they have confirmation that he was alive, but they _knew_ now, more or less what had happened.

He watched Eliot blubber out something between a laugh and a sob, holding on to Alice as Margo, Kady, Josh and Fen all crouched around him. He hadn’t reached the end of this nightmare, but it seemed that maybe, just _maybe_ , there was the smallest hint of dawn waiting at the end of the night.

* * *

**ELIOT**

"We need a Traveler," Julia said. Even in his distracted state, Eliot could see how excited she was, her tiny frame practically vibrating with the thought of progress, of real answers. Eliot knew the feeling.

"Okay," Eliot replied, raising an eyebrow at her. "I seem to recall you might have one of those in your Rolodex."

She shifted, biting her lip and looking over at Alice and away. The two of them were seated in one of the advisor’s chambers, across the long table from Eliot. "It's... it's not that easy," Julia said.

Eliot was getting really, seriously tired of the emotional whiplash between abject devastation, searing hope, and all-consuming fury. He'd just flipped to the third emotion in the blink of an eye, and fought to control the tremor of anger that coursed through him. "If you are going to sit here and tell me - if you think I give a _shit_ about your bad breakup with this dude half a decade ago - "

"God, Eliot, stop it," Alice said. Her expression was brittle, and she'd leaned closer to Julia, taking her hand in solidarity. "That's obviously not what she meant."

"So then _what_?" Eliot said, losing the battle against raising his voice. "What's the problem? Go find Penny-23, and tell him we _need_ him."

"Remember that whole Hedge Witch mess we got into, a couple of years ago?" Julia said. "When you all had your memories wiped?"

"Ironically, the whole thing is quite hard to forget," Eliot said, still gritting his teeth hard enough to hurt. "What about it?"

"The coven that was trying to hoard the magic, they were working with a psychic, who managed to - "

"You've got to be fucking kidding me," Eliot growled. "That was Penny? Penny fucking _cursed_ us? Why would he do that?"

"He didn't," Julia said. "Well, he did, but he didn't know it was us. That Owen figure is apparently a pretty charismatic guy. He had Penny all twisted around, had him believing he was fighting for free, uncontrolled access. Owen had an Anti-Library platform, and for obvious reasons, it was attractive to Penny, and - "

Eliot shut her up with a glare, standing up and stalking a few feet away from the table. "Is any of this strictly relevant? Clearly you've been _talking_ to the guy if you know all of this, which means you know where he is, which means you can get to him, which means we can _get to Quentin_. Do I look like I give a shit about the rest of it?"

Julia's eyes faltered at whatever she saw in Eliot's expression. She swallowed a few times, and her eyes were watery when she brought them back up to look at Eliot. "I love him too," she said finally, standing. "And I'll do whatever it takes to save him. If you don't know that, then I don't know what I could possibly say to convince you."

Eliot huffed out a breath, slamming his own eyes closed at the sight of Julia's grief. The thing was, his own pain was too much for any one person to handle. He didn't know how to process anyone else's right now. And that made him selfish, and shitty, and frankly unworthy of the person he was trying so desperately to rescue. Julia was Q's best friend, and she deserved - "I'm sorry," he managed. "I'm barely holding it the fuck together, Julia. I - haven't really slept in weeks, I'm..."

He'd started crying again, which wasn't all that rare these days, and for once he didn't pull away when offered comfort. Julia was small and warm against him, her arms tight and her frame trembling ever-so-slightly. "I only brought up the Penny thing because I wanted to warn you that he might be a little resistant. I'm going to ask him, and if he says no, I'll force him. I don't care what I have to do, Eliot. I _know_ you know that."

"Yeah," Eliot said, shuddering. "Of course I know that."

"Penny's been... less than contrite," Alice offered from a few feet away, and Julia and Eliot pulled apart to face her. "He regrets getting mixed up in Owen's coven, of course, and he apologized to us for the memory loss thing, but he's still not our biggest fan."

"Why is this the first I'm hearing about it?" Eliot asked. He honestly didn't give a shit about what Penny-23 was up to these days, about what he thought and what he'd done two years ago. He didn't have room left inside of him to focus on past hardships, when the present one was threatening at all times to consume him entirely. But Penny was the next step to getting Q back. Anything that stopped that from happening, no matter how insignificant in Eliot's brain, needed to be taken into consideration.

Alice and Julia shared another look, and Julia sighed. "I treated him like shit, you know. When things ended between us. I basically ignored him and cut him out of my life. And he's still angry about that. He has every right, if I'm being honest - "

"He took your choice away from you," Alice reminded her, managing to sound gentle towards Julia, and angry towards Penny, all at the same time. "He took your magic."

Julia waved a hand at her, dismissing this. "That's old news. And yeah, it hurt, and I felt betrayed, and even though I thought I'd forgiven him, that whole thing is probably a big part of why I never could have given us a real chance together. The point is, I hurt Penny, and then Penny, however inadvertently, hurt me - hurt _all_ of us, during that whole Hedge altercation. I wanted to make amends, and he agreed to talk, but it's slow-going, and he said he didn't want to get pulled back in to our whole group and all the crazy drama. This was months ago, before Q - "

"Okay," Eliot said. He took a couple of steadying deep breaths. "So he'll listen, if you talk to him, but he might fight you on what you're asking."

"It is a big ask," Alice said hesitantly. "It could be dangerous - "

"That's too damn bad," Eliot said. "He's doing it."

Julia rolled her eyes at him, the effect only slightly ruined by the fact that there were still tear-tracks running down her face. "No shit. But _you_ need to be polite, and solicitous, and thankful, or he might bristle and refuse to help."

"I don't remember him being that much of a _dick_ ," Eliot said. "I mean, _our_ Penny was way worse than - "

"We're about to ask him to _risk his life_ for someone who he was never all that close to. Let's just try and keep that in mind," Julia said.

For Quentin, Eliot would do his best. He'd never before appreciated how selfish and cruel he could be, when it came to protecting what was his. Julia was right - they should ask nicely for Penny's help, and then shower him with gratitude if he agreed. But he didn't care about Penny's hypothetical reluctance. He didn't even care, honestly, about Julia's tear-stained face or the dark circles visible even under Alice's glasses. He didn't care about how hard they'd been working, about how they were managing to do all of this while looking after a toddler at the same time.

He could only hope his better nature would survive the growing apathy inside of him long enough for Quentin to come back. Eliot could feel himself slipping farther and farther away from the person he wanted to be, every day he was forced to live without the best part of himself.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

If this didn’t work, Quentin was going to motherfucking lose his actual whole goddamn mind.

Every day, when he could manage to keep track of the passage of days, of course, it was getting harder and harder to remember how to be a person. It was getting harder to remember what it had felt like to _feel_ things, physically speaking. Sometimes he had to talk to himself, just for the memory of the way his voice sounded, but - it was _different_ in some way, to know that nobody else could hear his voice, no matter how close they were. No matter how loud Quentin was. He wondered sometimes if Eliot could remember exactly how he sounded, or if the precise tenor of his voice had started to fade from his husband’s mind.

And Quentin didn’t honestly give a fuck about Penny-23. He was just - some guy, some guy that reminded him painfully of the first Penny he had known, a man who had been good to him, in his own way, even if they’d never really managed to be friends. And 23 had been a dick to Julia. As far as he was concerned, there was no reason why he should ever have to spend time with the guy ever again.

At this exact moment, he wanted to talk to Penny-23 so badly it was setting his blood on fire.

The plan was actually simple - Julia had come up with a way to anchor Penny’s Traveler abilities so he’d be transported to wherever Quentin was. It was complex stuff, the kind of insane magic that he could never hope to understand, and it made him incredibly proud of his best friend for her ingenuity. Also, if it didn’t work… yeah. Again, the whole losing his mind thing seemed more of an inevitability, the longer he was trapped.

And so, his friends gathered together in one of the castle’s counsel chambers. Julia, Eliot, Margo, and Penny-23. Julia and Penny-23 were studiously avoiding meeting each other’s eyes, as Julia performed the spell that would guide Penny’s journey to Quentin. Margo was sitting stock still in one of the high-backed chairs, regal in her Kingly finery, tension held in the stillness of her spine and the clench of her jaw. Eliot was agitated to the point of physically trembling as he paced in small circles around the room, and Quentin felt the familiar ache, the _need_ , to touch him, to sooth him with his presence. If this didn’t work… _god_ it had to work. It had to.

Penny-23 looked over at Eliot, nodded at him, then closed his eyes. He shuddered, and opened them again, looking around the room with a frown. Quentin’s heart swooped down to his stomach for a moment, then leapt back into his throat, as he realized -

“Hey, it didn’t work,” Penny said, glancing at Julia and then away. “What - holy shit, _Coldwater_?”

His eyes had caught on Quentin, and in that moment, Q knew with certainty that whatever had happened to him, had happened to Penny as well. A quick glance at Eliot told him that Penny had vanished from view of the others. They were all quiet, waiting in hushed anticipation of his return.

Quentin’s throat was full of cement as he met Penny’s eyes. He couldn’t _breathe_ \- oh, holy hell, someone was _looking_ at him -

He was across the room and in Penny’s face before he’d thought about it. Heart pounding high in his chest, he reached forward and touched him, pulling him in for a hug.

And it felt - 

Hmm.

Quentin wasn’t sure. Penny felt real, and solid, in a way that nothing had, for a long time - but there was still something unreal about his own body. The way currents of air wouldn’t interact with his skin and hair, the way his footfall landed on the stone floor beneath him. Penny was here with Quentin, but Quentin was still not quite a real person.

“Um. _Hey_ ,” Penny said, patting him awkwardly on the back as Quentin pulled hastily away. “What the fuck? Shouldn’t you be hugging your husband, or - ”

“They can’t see us,” Quentin said, the words garbled and strangled as he fought for composure. “This is - I’m trapped here, Penny, I’ve been trapped _here_ this whole fucking time, I - ”

Penny’s eyebrows were raised, first in confusion, then in incredulity. “You’ve been - here? This whole time? The alternate dimension is just - what - invisibility?”

“You’ve got to get me out of here,” Quentin said, panic closing his throat around the words. Over the days - weeks - months (?) that he’d been trapped, his sense of urgency had faded, the sharpness of emotion easing back into a lackluster hope that one day something would change. And now - now something had, and every ounce of his desperation had come flooding back all at once. “You need to Travel us both out of here. Please, Penny.”

Quentin could tell that Penny was still a few steps behind him, blinking and looking between Quentin and the others in the room, none of whom were looking at either one of them.

“What if he doesn’t come back?” Eliot suddenly asked, and Penny snapped around to face him.

“He will,” Julia said. “This should be safe for him, we’re almost entirely sure.”

“What - ” Penny said, taking an uncertain step towards Julia. “Julia - ”

“I told you,” Quentin cut in. “They can’t _see_ us.”

“No,” Eliot said in response to Julia’s reassurance. “I mean - what if he doesn’t come back? What’s next, how do we get to Q?”

“Dick,” Penny said, rolling his eyes at Eliot. “The thanks I get - ”

“ _Penny_ ,” Quentin said. “Please, let’s just - let’s _go_ , okay?”

Penny finally met Quentin’s eyes, and his own widened in response to whatever he saw on Quentin’s face. “Okay. Shit, yeah, let’s go.” And he clapped a hand on Quentin’s shoulder. And - 

And - 

“Eliot?” Quentin asked, but he knew. He knew instantly that it hadn’t worked.

Eliot didn’t react to Quentin saying his name; he was still looking at Julia, his face rigid with anxiety.

The disappointment was devastating. “The fuck?” Penny said, grabbing tighter onto Quentin’s shoulder and snapping his eyes shut, grimacing with effort. “Why can’t I - ”

“Because I’m an idiot,” Quentin sad, trembling and sad. “I did - I did a spell that trapped me here. You’ll be able to leave, but you can’t take me with you.”

“I know,” Penny said. “About the spell, I mean, Julia - ” he cut himself off, frowning at the name. “They told me what had happened. They asked me to find you, if I could, and I’m supposed to tell you that apparently your spell created some kind of individual pocket universe, stuck between the layers of - ”

But Quentin cut him off again. As good as it was to hear someone talking to him, it was even better to talk to someone else and be heard. “I know. I was here, I heard everything.”

“Right,” Penny said, nodding. And then the full implications of that hit him, and he narrowed his eyes. “Like - all the time? You’re trapped in the castle or something?”

“No, I can go anywhere. I - I’m mostly hanging out here, around Eliot.” His voice broke on his husband’s name. For a few shining moments, he’d really thought - but no. It had been too much to hope for, that it would be that easy. “You - Penny, you need to go back, okay? And - and tell them - ” he swallowed. He couldn’t feel his tongue. “I have a message for El, okay? Can you - can you give it to him?”

Penny nodded, still more confused than compassionate. But he wasn’t - he actually wasn’t a fundamentally bad person, and Quentin knew that, even after Julia’s little revelation about Penny’s involvement in the memory wipe spell from a couple of years ago. Maybe later, when Quentin was finally back home, he could process that, and find the energy to be angry about it. Right now, Penny was a link to Eliot. To Julia. To Alice Margo Josh Fen Kady. And that was all that mattered.

* * *

**ELIOT**

Penny-23 reappeared after less than ten minutes.

Alone.

Eliot's legs were wobbly, close to collapse again. "Where - " he gasped out, taking a lurching step towards Penny. "What happened, where - "

"I saw him," Penny said, aggravatingly calm. Eliot was in no condition to appreciate the way Penny's eyes were slightly widened, his nostrils flared - he was clearly more affected by this than his tone would indicate. Maybe later, he'd remember to be grateful for what Penny had just done, but right now, all he needed was answers.

"You - he's - you saw him?" Eliot repeated, helpless.

"He's okay, but he's trapped. I couldn't grab on to him to bring him with me. We tried."

"You talked to him?" Eliot said. Margo was next to him, her fingers digging hard into his arm. He could barely feel it.

Something in Penny's expression shifted. He looked gentle, hesitant, and Eliot's blood ran cold, his heart squeezing tight in his chest. " _What_?" he said. "Say it, Penny, just say it, whatever it is, I need - "

"He's _okay_ ," Penny said, raising a hand and placing it against Eliot's shoulder. "Or as okay as he can be. It's just - you should know that he's here. He can see and hear you."

" _What_?!" It was Julia who had spoken. Eliot had mostly forgotten that she was in the room. Penny's eyes flickered to her briefly, and then back to Eliot.

"He's been here the whole time, in this pocket universe or whatever you want to call it. He can see you and hear you." Penny repeated the words in a clipped tone, precise and almost professional.

"Right now," Eliot said, dumbfounded. "He's here. He can - he's _here_?"

"He said - " Penny hesitated, his eyes boring in to Eliot's like he was searching for something.

" _What_?" Margo said, impatient on Eliot's behalf.

Penny let a slow breath out through his nose. "He said that he loves you, and he's worried about you." He paused. Eliot's heart had stopped beating for a second, and then resumed, double-time. "And he wants you to know that he's fighting for you, and that he needs you to take care of yourself. For him."

"He - Quentin? Said - " He was shaking. His arms were vibrating. His jaw hurt, his heart hurt, his fucking _eyeballs_ hurt with the pressure of it.

"And he said to say he told you so, about the two of you being cursed. But that you should remember what you said to him on your wedding day, about how you always get through it together."

And Eliot shattered. Just. Fell the fuck apart. He was aware of Penny and Margo both trying to catch him as he dropped to the floor, but he couldn't stop it. It wasn’t the first time he’d literally collapsed to the ground since Q had gone missing, his body incapable of holding itself together in the face of such pain. He couldn't do anything but cry, and shake, and say Quentin's name, a desperate call from the deepest parts of himself, and wait for it to stop. He half hoped he was going to pass out, but he didn't, he just kept shaking out of his skin, and then - something - he thought of something. Something pierced through the fog and he sat up, gasping and wild.

" _Wait_ ," Eliot said. "Right now, he can _hear me_?"

Penny nodded, wary, and Eliot took another deep gulp of air. "Oh, shit. Oh, _shit_. Q. Q, I'm so sorry. Oh, fuck. He's _worried_ about me because he's been - he's _seen_ \- "

"Eliot," Margo said, alarmed. It was slightly easier now to get a hold of himself, suddenly, because there was something to hold on _to_.

"Jesus," he said, gasping a few more times to regain some equilibrium. Julia had come over and was crouched down beside Penny and Margo, and all three of them were looking at him like he was about to crack up for good. Maybe he was, honestly. "Jesus, Margo, I've been - _talking_ to him."

"What? El, what do you mean, sweetie?"

He waved a hand, then reached it up to wipe away some of the wetness on his cheeks. "It's something Fen said. Something to do when you're missing someone, just - talk to them. If he's here, that means he's been _listening_ to me fall the fuck apart this whole time. God, I'm - I'm a mess. Jesus, _Quentin_."

He looked up in time to see Penny and Julia raise their eyebrows at each other, and then Penny looked away, grimacing, and Julia's eyes faltered. "So, is this like - a vanity thing, then?" Penny asked. "You're worried now that your husband's seen you after four days without a shower, or some shit?"

Eliot huffed out a sad, humorless laugh. "Fuck that. I'm _worried_ that my husband is fucking panicking because I'm a fall-down goddamn disaster without him, and he can't reach me or do anything to help me." He scrubbed an angry hand over his face, willing the stupid tears to stop falling. "Damn. Okay. Fuck. I need - what's the plan, now? We knew - we _should_ have known it wasn't going to be as easy as sending Penny in, so what's Plan B?"

Penny rolled his eyes, probably at the implication that what he had just done was _easy_ , but Eliot could not have cared less.

He felt - _joy_ wasn't quite the right word, but it was something close to that, a hysterical elation that might just be his undoing. Quentin was in this room with him right now, in a manner of speaking. And sure, he couldn't see him or hear him or touch him, but _Q could see him_. Eliot could talk to him, he could know, or at least have very good reason to believe, that he still _existed_ and was moving through the world - _a_ world - and was - fighting for him. Q was fighting for him, and Eliot had to do the same.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

Waiting was still torture. But waiting with an end goal in sight made everything feel more real, _possible_ , in a way Quentin had started to think would never happen again.

In the aftermath of his conversation with Penny, Quentin watched as Eliot put a concerted effort into controlling his emotional state. He kept darting his eyes around every room he was in, clearly wondering if Quentin was nearby. It was - _better_ , to know that Eliot was aware of him, but still torture to know he had no real way of reaching him. Everyone, Eliot included, seemed in better spirits now that they had confirmation that Quentin was alive. It was time for a new plan, new ideas, and even though Quentin was aware that there was still a hard road ahead, he felt just as invigorated as the others.

"Hey, so. Uh," Eliot said to his empty bedroom later that night, after Margo had insisted he try and get some sleep. "I don't know if you're here. Like, right now, anyway. Penny said you told him you're mostly hanging around with me, but not always, so. Um. I guess I'm just going to assume you're here, Q."

Quentin went up to him, pressed insubstantial lips against his forehead. "I'm here."

"I just want you to know that I'm okay, baby."

" _Right,_ " Quentin said, rolling his eyes.

"Well," Eliot huffed out. "Obviously I'm not _okay_. I'm about as far from okay as - _Fuck_." He paused, swallowing and blinking rapidly a few times. His eyes were darting all over the room, and Quentin could practically hear him wondering where he was, if he was really here, which direction to face. "I'm surviving, Q. And I'm fighting for you too. I'm really, really sorry I let things get - you were right. I'm going to do better, I'm gonna eat, I'm going to try and get some sleep, and, and, you know, talk to people, to our friends. We're all going to do whatever we can, we're going to figure this out, but I don't want to be a completely unhinged disaster when we get you back. I want to be better for you."

"I want you to be better for _you_ ," Quentin sighed, tipping his head forward so their foreheads were pressed together. It didn't feel anything like the real thing. He couldn't feel Eliot's breath on him the way he yearned for, or the warmth and nearness of him. He honestly couldn't remember what it felt like to touch another human being.

"And I know what you're saying," Eliot said. "That I should want to be healthy for my own sake. It's all that goddamn codependency shit I made us talk about in therapy. I should have known that was going to come back to bite me."

"God, El."

"I don't want this. I don't want this life without you. This body, this - this existence. I don't want to breathe air or eat food or _think thoughts_ if you're not here. It's fucked. It's completely _fucked_ , and I know that, I really do, I just can't seem to change it." He'd gotten slightly worked up while he spoke, fighting against a tremor in his voice. Quentin ached for him. Constantly.

"I get it, believe me," Quentin said, attempting unsuccessfully to thread a hand through Eliot's hair. "I'm going to be really, _really_ clingy when I get out of here, just so you know."

"I don't think I'm ever going to let you out of my sight, once you're back, Q. You've been warned."

"I love you," they said together, and worlds apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happiness waiting just around the corner, I promise!


	3. Chapter Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, so, much! I hope you like the conclusion.

**ELIOT**

There was nothing to find, no magical spell to discover that would bring Quentin out of his pocket universe. Which didn't mean it was helpless - it just meant they had to build the spell from scratch.

"And how long is that going to take?" Eliot asked. Just the suggestion of a plan, the reality of someone, anyone, having seen Quentin alive, having talked to him, it was almost too much. Almost overwhelming. The hope was choking him, and he was aware, in a crystal clear kind of way that went past the point of terror, that if they failed now, it would shatter him. Break him, in some fundamental, unspeakable way. He'd thought he was already broken, thought he'd gotten past the point of this kind of desperation, but it was back now, thrumming through him as strong and overwhelming as it had been in the first few days of Quentin's absence. His hands were itching. His heart was bruised and cracked within him.

At the moment, they were all gathered in Eliot and Quentin’s chambers, Margo sitting next to him on the bed and petting a soothing hand up and down his spine as Julia, Alice, and Josh looked over some preliminary notes, and Fen hovered close by, clearly craving something helpful to do.

“A while,” Alice said, apologetic and yet still glowing with progress and hope. “Weeks, maybe months.”

“No,” Eliot said, an instant denial. He wouldn’t survive that long.

“We don’t have a choice.” Alice’s voice was softer now, but still steady and rational. “We’ll do everything we can, and we have the traveler spell that Quentin messed up as a guide, but something like this… it’s unprecedented. We’re going to have to be methodical. A mistake could be fatal. For us, or for Q.”

That shut him up, at least for the moment.

So it was back to planning, and research, and long days and nights of hard work. It was the happiest Eliot could imagine being without Quentin by his side, because at least now - at least now there was a chance.

Waiting was easier when there was a plan, but _easier_ didn’t mean _easy_. There was only so much of the prep work that Eliot could do himself. The spell was convoluted and tangled and involved so many moving parts coming together, that he mostly had to leave it to Julia and Alice. There were pieces they would give him, smaller sets of ingredients that he could enchant, rituals he could perform. He thought they might be placating him, giving him busy work to do while the grownups did the hard parts, but if that was the case, he had no room in him to complain. Julia and Alice had long since surpassed him in the realm of magical knowledge.

As the spell came together, they discovered elements that required weeks of repeated reinforcing, liquids that had to steep, rituals that could only be performed on Earth, others that could only be performed on Fillory.

Another thing that made the waiting slightly easier was Quentin. The reality of him, even unseen, was a constant comfort. He could _talk_ to Quentin now. Not like he had been before, but _really_ talk to him, even if he couldn’t be sure Quentin was always with him. He’d asked him to stick close, though, and based on what Penny had told him, he figured Quentin wouldn’t stray too far. So he kept him informed, talked him through the parts of the spell he understood, asked Alice to explain the parts he didn’t.

It kept him going, kept him putting one foot in front of the other. He even started sleeping better, the knowledge that Quentin was nearby making him rest easy for the first time in months. 

And eventually, pain-stakingly, the spell was prepared. The day they were set to make their attempt dawned cold and grey, and Eliot woke from a light slumber, exhausted down to the marrow of his bones, but also so energized he couldn’t stand to lie still for another second.

He had expected to be the first one to arrive at their meeting place, one of the large and mostly abandoned counsel chambers near the throne room. It had been cleared of furniture for the intricacies of the spell they were about to perform, but instead of the cavernous empty space he’d expected, be found the room decidedly not deserted.

In fact, it seemed that everyone else was already there. Margo, Josh, Fen, Julia, Alice. There was a solemnity to the room, a quiet, tense rhythm to the conversation, that immediately set the hairs on Eliot’s arms on end. He cleared his throat to announce his presence, and they all turned to him.

“What happened? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Julia said immediately, her voice too high.  
“Is this happening today, or not? Because I’m not - I’m at the end of my rope.” It was an understatement. Eliot tried to imagine what could have happened - did a spell component get contaminated? Did they find another obstacle, a set of circumstances they hadn’t accounted for? How long would the delay be? How many more days and nights could Eliot realistically stand? What if they had to scrap it, start over? How was he meant to bear it?

“It’s happening,” Julia said, turning to look at Alice with fierce and anxious eyes. “It’s happening, right?”

“Yes,” Alice said slowly. “It’s just that… we finally figured out the trigger that sets the spell in motion. It’s doable, we have the ingredient in ready supply…” she trailed off, glancing anxiously at Julia before looking back at Eliot.

“Yeah, we covered this,” Eliot said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Something from the person who loves him most. We’ve done this kind of magic before, remember the Lover’s Touch curse?”

He caught the slightest flinch from Alice, but didn’t have time to regret his words. That had been… a not-so-great time for Alice, what with discovering her boyfriend was in love with someone else. Still, the past was the past, and the present situation, the one where Alice was happily married with a kid, and Eliot was alone and cold and shaky and desperate, needed to be everyone’s priority. _Quentin_ needed to be everyone’s priority.

“Right, but it’s not just _something_ ,” Alice continued. “It… it needs to be - ” she huffed, annoyed with herself for the stammer, and then just said it - "It requires a blood sacrifice.”

"Which is - archaic," Margo said slowly, darting a hesitant eye over to Eliot.

Was that it?

"Okay," Eliot said, nodding easily. "You can't honestly think I'm going to balk at a little bloodletting between friends, right? Let's do it." He rolled up his sleeve, holding his arm out in front of him. He could feel the blood pounding in his veins, racing to the surface like it was eager to help. The key to getting Quentin back - Eliot’s own life blood. That seemed appropriate.

“It’s not actually that simple,” Alice said. And despite the fact that Eliot really had been doing better, eating and sleeping and keeping his temper in check, he felt a spike of anger at that. Alice was a pragmatist, sure, but it was hard not to read every obstacle as an excuse, every bump in the road as some indication that Quentin wasn’t worth it to her.

“The spell requires too much blood,” Alice continued. “If - if we take enough to power the spell, it’ll kill you.”

It wasn’t really a question, of course. But still, Eliot blanched for a moment at the thought of it. He glanced around the room, at all of these people willing to go through so much trouble on Quentin’s behalf. He knew what it would do to Margo, to the others, if they never got Quentin back. He also knew what it would do to them if they lost Eliot. But even so... “So be it.”

“ _Eliot_ ,” Margo hissed, disbelieving and furious. “Quentin would _not_ want - ”

“Yeah, I’m well aware,” Eliot said. “But I can’t fucking live like this, and if it’s the only way to bring him back...”

“Okay, slow down,” Julia cut in, sounding more than a little terrified. “I think we can share the load, here. You give as much of your blood as you can, and then I - ”

“It says the person who loves him the most,” Eliot said. That really wasn’t open for debate.

“That part of the spell is based off of something we found written in an ancient Fillorian dialect, actually, and the word for ‘person’ can be singular or plural. So. It’s not a guarantee, but certainly worth a try before we just go ahead and kill you, yes?” Julia coughed, then presented her own forearm. “Let’s do this before I pass out. I’m not big on blood.”

“Julia,” Alice said. “Are you sure you want to do that?”

“Obviously she’s sure,” Eliot said, and then blinked, having forgotten for a moment that Quentin was most likely in the room with them. It was disturbingly easy to forget, what with how bad he missed him every single second. “Shit. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Julia said, but Eliot shook his head.

“Apologizing to Q, actually,” he told her, a grim smile lifting just one corner of his mouth. “He just saw me demand that you all bleed me dry. Which probably wasn’t - ”

“Damn,” Margo said. “Sorry, Coldwater. Wouldn’t have let him do it, in any case.”

Eliot snapped a glare over to her, even knowing she was right. It didn’t matter now, anyway. “Okay, no time like the present. Let’s go.”

He and Julia positioned themselves at the center of the elaborate pentagram that had been drawn in chalk on the chamber floor. Eliot took another glance around the room, taking in his friends and allies, the people who had worked so hard to make this moment possible. He wanted to feel affection for them. Gratitude. And he did - but like so much else in his life since Quentin had vanished, it felt unreal and muted. The center of his mind and his heart was blotted out by Quentin Coldwater, by the absence of him, the _necessity_ of his return. He was done imagining how it would feel, what he would do, if this attempt wasn’t successful.

There was no turning back now. 

* * *

**QUENTIN**

“Fuck you, Eliot,” Quentin seethed, pacing around the exterior of the room as they did the final setup for the spell. His head was pounding in fear and anger at the way Eliot had almost just thrown himself on a knife for Quentin, reckless and thoughtless and _cruel_ and - 

Fuck.

Eliot needed him. If Quentin had ever had reason to doubt that before, he didn’t anymore. Eliot was _damaged_ without him, in some fucked up, twisted way. He hadn’t even seemed to remember, at first, that Quentin would hear his ridiculous self-sacrificial plan. And when he had, he still hadn’t seemed to regret it. Knowing that Eliot would die for him was one thing. Hearing him agree to it without even blinking was… it was something else. If this didn’t work... 

"If this doesn't work..." Alice said, pulling the words right from Quentin’s mind. Eliot growled at her.

"I don't want to hear it, Quinn."

"Yes you do," Alice insisted. She raised a hand to hold off Julia, who had opened her mouth to defend Alice from Eliot's frenetic mood. "What I was going to say, Eliot, is that if this doesn't work, we'll keep trying. I don't care how long it takes."

Eliot blinked at her, and swallowed visibly. Quentin's heart twisted around in his chest. He wanted to touch him. He was angry, and scared, but - he just wanted to touch _all_ of them. Julia gave such amazing hugs. Alice fit so perfectly against him, the warm weight of hard-won friendship and familiarity, triumphant in its ease. Margo. Josh. Fen. All of whom had given up so much time and effort and sleepless nights to reach this exact moment, to bring him back where he belonged.

He wanted this to work so bad he could practically taste it, the feel of real living breeze against his skin, the press of his hands into solid objects, solid flesh. It was dangerous, this wanting. He'd crawled out past the lowest point of despair and he was standing on the edge of hope. It was bright, white-hot and vital, and if this failed - if he didn't make his way back into the real world, he didn't know if he'd be able to stop himself from slipping back into the grey nothing of the in between. He made himself look at Eliot, focus on the redness of his eyes, the new lines along his forehead and around his mouth, the shocking and out-of-place grey that had started to appear in his hair, far too young. Quentin would be strong, and he'd fight like hell, because it wasn't only _his_ life that depended on it.

He lost a few minutes, maybe longer, while they were preparing the spell, his mind slipping out of time while the setup was occurring, while they cut Eliot’s arm open with a blade. He blinked, and watched in distaste as the blood welled up and into an ornate bowl, carved with yet more spellwork around the rim. Julia’s blood joined Eliot’s, the two of them standing stalwart, albeit pale, as they fed their love to the spell, putting everything on the line for Quentin.

And Alice, Margo, and Josh began the chant. Quentin joined them in it, out of habit, out of some ingrained desire to be a part of his own rescue. As insignificant as it seemed, one of the emotions Quentin found himself feeling, here at what was hopefully the end of his torment was… embarrassment. The spellwork required to save him was elaborate, and brilliant, and also involved Eliot and Julia literally opening up their veins for him. And none of this would have been necessary if he hadn’t been reckless enough to mess with experimental magic on his own. He’d have a lot of apologizing to do, when this was over.

God, let it be over.

As the chanting continued, and as Eliot and Julia lifted their arms away from the bowl and wrapped their wounds to stop the bleeding, Quentin sensed a shimmer in the air in front of him. It wasn’t anything as concrete as a doorway, more just… an energy, a patch of air that was tilted, somehow, like it existed not-here and not-there, but somewhere both and neither. It was terrifying to behold, even as Quentin found himself walking towards it. He had a brief worry that it would be too hard, that going back to the real world would kill him, would tear him from the last vestiges he still had of himself.

But Eliot was over there. Eliot was waiting for him, with blood soaking through the bandage wrapped around his arm. And so Quentin stepped into the patch of air, just as the cacophony of voices finished their chant, the spell reaching its crescendo in perfect synchronicity with Quentin’s unsteady yet determined stride.

And he was - 

It was -

It worked.

He knew it instantly because -

Everything felt so wonderful that it hurt, maybe worse than anything had ever hurt before, and yet Quentin wanted to live in this moment for the rest of his life. He could feel air in his lungs. He could feel the play of barely-there indoor air currents against his skin. He could feel light hit his eyes, his real eyes, his honest-to-god-human-eyeballs-in-the-actual-substantial- _world_. His feet were inside shoes and standing upon a stone surface. The fabric of his shirt was brushing against him. He had a heart and it was beating. Everything he hadn't known to miss was suddenly back, all at once, and he wanted to weep and scream and die and live all at once, in a cacophony of joyous feeling.

Julia reached him first, and he flinched when she touched him, the warmth and pressure of a hand on his arm overwhelming in the extreme. " _Q_ ," she sobbed into his neck, and Quentin fought for control, fought to make himself speak, to say something, to _thank_ her for trying so hard to get him back -

But his mouth wasn’t working. His hands were shaking. Julia was hurting him, digging her fingers into his shoulders as she clung to him, but he wouldn’t have moved her for the world.

At least, he wouldn’t have, except for -

Eliot.

Quentin’s attention was drawn to him when he heard a sound from behind him, like someone had just been punched very hard in the stomach. He turned, pulling away from Julia on unsteady, coltish legs, and - Eliot was looking at him. Eliot was _looking_ at him.

He was swaying where he stood, his face completely drained of color. His eyes were wide and red-rimmed and disbelieving, and he wasn't - moving. Or speaking. Quentin felt on the verge of passing out. "El," he said, and the word was scraped out of him like nothing he'd ever felt before. "Eliot."

And then _Eliot_ passed out.

"Fuck," Margo said, dropping to her knees as Eliot crumpled, cradling his head before it could crack against the stone floor.

Quentin stumbled forward, remembering the existence of legs that walked using _muscles_ , and fell gracelessly next to him as well, reaching, touching - "El," he said again. It seemed like maybe it was the only sound he'd ever make. He gasped when his fingers brushed against the wan skin of Eliot’s face, electric shocks cascading up and down his arm at the contact. “Eliot?”

“It’s the bloodloss,” Alice said, coming to crouch between Margo and Quentin. “And the shock. He’ll be okay.”

“Eliot,” Quentin said, because apparently he really had forgotten all of the other words. He curled his hand around Eliot’s jaw, and Eliot’s eyes flickered open, blinking up at him in bewildered confusion.

“Q,” he said, dream-like and hoarse. He lifted a hand and trailed his fingers along the lines of Quentin’s face. His breathing was shallow and uneven. “Hey.”

  
“ _Hey_ ,” Quentin said, half laughing, half sobbing. “ _Hey_ , honey, I’m here.”

“That’s good,” Eliot said, his eyes glazed. Quentin could tell he wasn’t totally tracking. “Are you okay?”

“I’m good, I’m okay.”

“Good,” Eliot repeated, and his eyes fluttered closed again, his head turning so his cheek was resting against Quentin’s hand, rolling into Margo’s thigh where she held him close.

“Let’s get him into bed,” Alice said, and if Quentin had had time to be worried about anything else, he might have noticed the waver in her voice, the way her face was shiny with tears when Quentin managed to glance at her for a second before looking back down at Eliot.

“He needs to eat something,” Margo said. Then she shook her head, bringing a hand up to grip Quentin by the chin and force his eyes up to hers. “I’m so fucking glad you’re not dead, Q.”

“I’m glad too,” he said, still hoarse and a little bit disbelieving.

There wasn’t really time for further sentimentality. Alice placed a hand on his shoulder and squeezed hard, Fen touched his hand briefly, but everyone was more focused on his and Eliot’s physical well-being to get into anything more. Alice performed some magic to help replenish Eliot’s blood, and the group managed to get him standing, stumbling and leaning almost his full weight against Quentin, back to their room. He kept saying Quentin’s name, leaning into him with hitching breaths, like he wanted to say something more, but couldn’t find the words. Quentin understood. Physically, he still felt like everything was Too Real, Too Much. But also, he felt - okay. Invigorated. Wide awake, like nothing had happened at all. But mentally? Spiritually? He was a mess.

“Should we try and get him to eat something?” Julia asked hesitantly, as they dipped Eliot down into bed. Quentin followed him down, kneeling over him, helpless and overwhelmed.

“We should let him sleep,” Quentin said, which was the longest string of words he’d been able to put together yet. “The - the spell, it’ll stop his blood levels from - ”

“He’s okay,” Alice said, her hand back on his arm. “And you? You’re - ”

“I have everything I need,” Quentin said. He hadn’t meant it to sound sentimental, but he glanced up from Eliot’s face, gone slack in relief and slumber, to see Alice and Julia exchanging tearful glances. “I - I just need to pass out for a little, I think.”

And after that, someone - he thought it was probably Margo - had manhandled Quentin and Eliot under the covers, taken their shoes off, and shooed everyone out of the room. Eliot was asleep, hadn’t really ever woken up, not all the way. Quentin thought about waking him, talking to him, kissing him until he’d managed to convince himself that this was real. That after everything, he was actually back where he belonged.

But he was asleep before he could decide what he wanted to do first.

* * *

Quentin, mentally exhausted though he was, hadn’t been able to sleep for long. He’d woken after only a couple of hours, finding that he and Eliot had flipped over in their sleep so that Quentin was on his back, with Eliot on his stomach, his face smashed into Quentin’s collarbone, his weight pressing Quentin back into the mattress.

Eliot was still asleep, and Quentin just lay there with him, unwilling to wake him, for several more hours. Quentin had first-hand knowledge of how badly Eliot had been sleeping, how badly he needed rest. And even as he longed for the sight of Eliot’s eyes looking at him, Eliot seeing him and _hearing_ him… he wasn’t going to complain about this either.

Being able to touch him, to run a hand over his back, his fingers along the back of his neck, his lips against his forehead - it was everything. He'd never understood the meaning of touch-starved before, but he did now. Touching Eliot was causing goose-flesh to erupt over every bit of his skin. He was tingling and shivering all over from it, enough so that he was almost worried he'd wake Eliot. But he couldn't stop. He had one of his hands under Eliot's shirt, just touching the warm skin of his back, marveling at the ability to feel the press of living flesh under the pads of his fingertips. How could he have even thought about giving this up? How could he have even contemplated -

"Q," Eliot mumbled, coming awake slowly. He burrowed his face into Q's chest, kissing him along his pectoral muscles, higher, towards the hollow of his neck. His lips were so warm, so soft. "Q..." he repeated the name, his eyelashes tickling against Q's skin, and then he gasped, tight and sharp, and his hands squeezed hard into Quentin's waist. "Oh my god."

"Hey."

"Oh, god, I was - I thought I was dreaming. You're - You're here. You're - oh, god, Quentin." Eliot's hands were suddenly a blur of constant motion. Gentle, but frantic too - in his hair, sliding along his jaw, down his chest, around to his back, down his legs - the touch wasn't strictly sexual in nature, more like a desperate confirmation, the need to map every line of Quentin's body to reassure himself it was real.

"Yeah, El. Yeah, I'm here. I'm - "

"Oh, fuck. I - I thought - _Q_ , oh _fuck_.”

“I know,” Quentin said. He did. He knew exactly - he’d _seen_ it, every inch of Eliot’s anguish. Eliot squirmed up slightly so their foreheads were touching, his hands coming to rest on Quentin’s waist. He stared down at Quentin with wide, disbelieving eyes, his mouth open and trembling.

“Are you okay?” he asked, his voice breathtakingly small.

“I am now,” Quentin said. “You - you fainted.”

“Blood loss, I guess,” Eliot said. “For - for the spell. I had to - but you saw that, right?”

Quentin nodded, their foreheads still pressed tight together. He felt a small flash of anger, remembering again the way Eliot had volunteered to die. But he pushed the thought away, looking up into Eliot’s bloodshot, darting eyes. “I - I wanted to come back, I’m sorry I couldn’t find a way - ”

“No,” Eliot said, shaking his head hard enough that their noses brushed together. “No, I - no, Q, I’m sorry - I’m sorry I made you see me like - I - ”

There was so much to talk about. So much to say. Quentin had spent so many hours - days, weeks, _months_ , waiting for this moment, when he could talk to Eliot and Eliot could hear him. He thought of everything he wanted to tell him, everything they _needed_ to discuss. It was too much. He didn’t know where to start. And so - he kissed him, instead.

Eliot groaned and melted into him at once, the sound pulled deep from within him, a relief that Quentin felt reverberating along his skin, down to his soul. He was a heavy, comforting, familiar presence, enveloping every inch of him, turning his bones to liquid inside of him. It still felt like he hadn’t been touched in years. It also felt like he and Eliot had done this only yesterday, his body coming awake in the automatic way it always did when Eliot was near him, wanting him.

The kiss turned frantic and sloppy at once, Eliot’s body a hot weight pressing him deliciously back into the mattress. He tore his lips away only long enough to whisper against Quentin’s mouth, his hands tightening against Quentin’s hips, sliding lower. “I need you, Q, I - don't think I can - we should _wait_ , I - "

"No. Now," Quentin said, his blood thrumming hot and vital inside of him. He pulled at Eliot's waist to bring him down further, pressing his body up into Eliot’s as he did so. Eliot groaned again before he’d even reconnected their lips, and when they opened to each other, it was like they'd both suddenly remembered how to breathe.

* * *

**ELIOT**

Quentin. _Quentin. Fuck_. Eliot's mind was running in a loop, the realities of the outside world unraveling around him. He felt drunk, giddy and terrified and overjoyed and every emotion he could ever remember feeling, swirling around him like a supernova about to go off. He was probably still lightheaded from blood loss, but he couldn’t care about that right now, with Quentin squirming and gasping beneath him. A fantasy he’d hoarded for months, a roaring need that went beyond lust, made real at last.

He wasn't sure how they'd gotten undressed, exactly. Everything was a blur of motion and sensation, but before he knew it he was twisting his shaking hands into a tut and then bringing one hand down, wet with lube, gripping and tugging at Quentin and himself together, both of them so fucking hard already, and then, impatient, sliding his hand lower, before they could even get into a proper rhythm. Eliot was kissing him, deep, filthy, endless kisses, pushing him as far into the mattress as he could go, and he found wasn't capable of gentleness - Q let out a squeak when Eliot slid a finger into him, straight past the knuckle, jerking and lifting his head up and away from Eliot, groaning.

"Are you - " Eliot gasped, his face falling down onto Quentin's chest. "Can I - "

"Yes, God, don't stop."

Eliot twisted his finger inside, curling it until he found - " _Fuck. Eliot_."

Eliot kept his finger there, swirling it around Quentin's prostate and relishing in the high, desperate sounds he was wringing from Q. His heart was pounding hard in his chest, in his temples. He almost couldn't believe this was really happening.

Eliot had dreamed about this. He'd closed his eyes and took himself in hand, feeling desperately lonely and longing - just begging the universe for the gift of this, his name in Quentin's mouth like worship, the sound of his hitched, nearly pained sounds of pleasure. He entered another finger, twisting and widening them while Quentin moaned and jerked up beneath him, impatient. Eliot found his limbs were shaking, _everything_ in him was shaking. He slid himself down further so he could bite and lick at Q's nipples each in turn, and Q buried his hands in Eliot's hair, twisting hard enough to hurt. Eliot ground himself down into the mattress a few times, desperate for friction, but it felt too good and he stopped - he needed to be inside Quentin when he came. It was suddenly the only important thing in the universe.

Eliot lifted his head for a moment and looked at him, really _looked_ at him, spread out beneath him, saw the way his chest was flushed and red, saw him, hard and leaking already. He had the urge, so intense he was lightheaded with it, to taste him, just get his lips around him and let Q fuck up into his mouth - but that had to wait, that had to _wait_ , because Quentin was begging for him, wanted him inside, just as much as Eliot wanted to be there.

"Q - "

"Fuck me, Eliot. _Now_."

"Jesus Christ," Eliot said, slipping a third finger inside. Quentin was opening to him so well, like they had only done this yesterday instead of six months ago. Oh god, oh god, _six months_. Six months without this, without the love of his life, the touch of his skin, the sound of his voice.

"Don't cry," Quentin said, and Eliot only then realized he had been, little hitched sounds buried in the skin of Quentin's chest. Q's hands pulled on his ears until he lifted his head to look into his eyes, and at the sight, Eliot couldn't help let out a little laugh, just as he twisted his fingers around the spot that made Quentin jerk up against him, little staccato moans falling endlessly from his lips with every press of his fingers.

"You're allowed to cry and I'm not?" Eliot said, and Quentin let out a watery laugh of his own. One of his hands went to his own face and he patted the wetness clumsily away.

"I didn't realize," Quentin said. And then his eyes shuttered shut and he bit down on his lip, his back bowing upwards until he was resting almost all of his weight on the top of his head. "El. El, _fuck, now_. I want you inside me when I come, I want - "

Eliot was mad with it, the _need_ of it, beyond wanting, beyond pleasure. But he was still somewhat aware that Quentin couldn't really be ready for him yet. He lined himself up and pressed inside, just the head, determined to go slow. Quentin let out a low groan, deep and rumbling in his chest, and shoved his hips downwards before Eliot had had a chance to prepare himself.

"Ah, _fuck. God, Q_ ," Eliot bucked a few desperate, wild times, and then shoved himself forward as tight and as hard as he could, until he was buried to the hilt. "Oh, Christ, Quentin."

"Move," Quentin said, rough. "I’m good, I’m good, don’t go slow."

Eliot's body obeyed.

He'd actually thought about this too, pathetic and aching in the darkness of a lonely bed. What it would be like to be with Quentin again, when he found him, when he got him back. He'd pictured a slow, methodical worship. He'd pictured himself kissing every inch of Quentin's skin with dry, soft lips, petting him and waking his body up to the feel of togetherness once again. He'd been prepared, somehow, for Q to be skittish and uncertain of him after such a long time apart. Or maybe he'd worried that _he_ would be the uncertain one, somehow, that he would have forgotten the secrets of this body that he knew better than his own.

But it wasn't like that. There was no gentleness; there couldn't be. Instead, they were both wild with it. Eliot almost didn't want to pull out of the tight, hot heat of Quentin's body long enough to shove back in; he grabbed Quentin's legs and pressed his thighs up so he could get a better angle, then heard a shout - his? Quentin's? both? - when he slid in deeper, bottoming out.

Quentin was chanting something under his breath, his voice low and desperate - Eliot blinked sweat from his eyes as he kept moving, feeling the pressure building, too quick, too much, and tried to listen, to hear it - _Love you, love you, love - you - Eliot_ \- 

"Nngh," Eliot said, trying for words, he wasn't sure what. Nothing made sense. Nothing else mattered. He bent forward, folded himself and Quentin both in half, determined to stay deep inside him and reach his lips at the same time. They kissed, wet and deep and sloppy, the force of their movements causing their teeth to clack together, Eliot's nose to bump into Quentin's cheekbone in a way that would have been painful, had there been room in him to feel anything else.

He knew neither of them could last long. He felt the pooling of pleasure in his stomach, was hyper-aware of how his limbs were shaking, his arms barely holding him up, his hands and lips grasping at every bit of Quentin he could find in his frenzy. He shifted, trying to find an angle, determined to bring Q off with him. He knew when he'd found the right spot, because Quentin _screamed_.

"God, you're so perfect, Q, you're so pretty, look at you, baby, you're unbelievable - " he was babbling, his rhythm starting to falter, his thrusts growing wild and hard and erratic. One of his hands was gripped hard in Quentin's hair and he slid it down, aiming to take Q in hand, but Quentin slapped it away.

"No, I - don't need - I'm gonna - "

"Oh, fuck, Quentin. Jesus, that's so - you’re so - " Eliot tried to make his thrusts steady again, tried to hit Q's prostate with every pass, and heard at each thrust the whimpers falling from Q's lips. Music. Fucking music. The best sound in the world. The only sound that mattered. True to his word, Quentin didn't need a hand on him to come. His hands were twisted in the sheets beneath them, his teeth cutting into his bottom lip, his eyes fluttering madly, trying to stay focused on Eliot's face, and then he gasped, eyes rolling back in his head for a moment, and -

He clenched down hard on Eliot, who was still chasing his own orgasm inside of him, when he came. Wet, long ropes of his release shot upwards, painting his stomach and chest, some of it landing as high as his chin. Eliot shouted out with him, ducking to lick and bite at Q's neck, find purchase, find _something_ to hold on to, and, with Q still clenching and moaning around him, rushed forward into his own release, the white hot center of pleasure pulsing outwards, overcoming everything, becoming all that was left of both of them.

Eliot had never felt anything more perfect in his entire life. He felt - relieved, yes, but also unsated, even as he was still coming - like he wanted that with Quentin again, right the fuck now. And again and again, for the rest of time. And he’d have it. He’d fight the entire universe for the right to keep it. And he knew Quentin would fight alongside him.

* * *

**QUENTIN**

When Quentin came, his vision actually whited out. He heard an animal sound, something low and ongoing and vibrating through him, and wasn't sure if it came from himself or Eliot. He tried - he _tried_ to keep his eyes open, he wanted to see, and he managed it for a moment, saw the look on Eliot's face, twisted in pleasure and agony, his own eyelids fluttering madly in the effort to keep looking down at Q. They were both shuddering and shaking, and Q could feel it as his eyes slipped shut, colors swirling behind his eyelids, the pulse of Eliot's own release deep inside of him. Every inch of him was vibrating.

It seemed to go on for a long, long time, sending shock-waves of pleasure up and outward from the center of him, through every limb, every strand of hair on his head. He had just started to come down from it when he felt Eliot's hand on him and realized he was still hard. It hurt, it _hurt_ , a burning intensity that he never wanted to end. Eliot was still shoving and pulsing into him, they were sweating and sliding together, every inch of them as tightly connected as they could be. Eliot's hand was trapped between their stomach, pulling roughly at Q until he felt the shuddering, unbelievable release of a second orgasm. His breathing was loud and harsh and the cresting of the pleasure was still going, he was still, _still_ shaking apart from it when Eliot gave one last twitch, jerking tighter into him, and let his arms give out. Eliot fell, his full weight pressing Quentin deep into the mattress.

Holy. Fucking. Hell.

Quentin wanted to say that out loud, and hear Eliot's answering laugh, but his throat wouldn't work. He tried to swallow, but there was tightness everywhere. He was afraid that if he opened his mouth, he'd start sobbing. Instead, he sank in to the aftershocks, feeling the delicious way his hands were shaking, his skin jumping and twitching like an electric current. He pressed his nose into Eliot's hair, the only place he could reach, and let the cool darkness of satisfied need wash over him.

He wasn't sure how long they lay there. He thought he might have drifted off for a moment, because when he was next aware, Eliot had slipped out of him, and they were dry and clean, but still pressed up together, Eliot covering him everywhere. Their hearts were pounding very, very hard against one another, and Quentin's breath was still coming out in little hitching gasps. He thought he was probably crying again, but his arms felt too numb and rubbery to move, so he didn't check. Eliot's voice was a low, whispered rumble against his chest.

"I told everyone I hadn't given up," Eliot said. He sounded very controlled, but the vibration directly against Quentin's chest allowed him to catch just the hint of a tremble in his tone. "I told _myself_ I would never give up, _never_. But Q - I..." he stopped, and his breath hitched in tandem with Quentin's. "To tell the truth, Quentin, I thought I'd never see you again."

Quentin shuddered, and raised his arms to hold Eliot to him, pressing every inch of them together, their skin still hot and trembling. But he wasn't close enough. He could never be close enough. He wanted to burrow inside of him, wanted to never stop touching him again for the rest of their lives. "I'm so sorry," Quentin said. "I'm so sorry, I know how much you - I know how hard it was for you. I tried so hard, El, I really - "

Eliot shushed him, lifting up slightly to look at him as he carded his still-shaking hands through Quentin's hair. He pressed his lips down Q's jaw and then kept his open mouth on his neck, speaking directly against Q's pulse-point so he could feel the vibration of the words. "It's not your fault. I know you fought, Q. I know you did. I'm sorry I lost hope."

"I thought it would kill me, not being able to touch you. Nothing's ever been worse than that, El. You were right there, and I could - I could feel you, physically, but it was all wrong, I couldn't - "

"You can touch me now," Eliot said. "As much as you want."

Quentin laughed, miserable and elated all at once. "We're never going to get that time back - " he froze, something occurring to him for the first time.

"El... how long was I gone?"

Eliot went still on top of him. "They didn't tell you?"

"They were all a little too worried about both of us to get in to the specifics," Quentin said, dread coalescing in his gut. “ Where I was, in that… that place? Sometimes it felt like days, sometimes years.” He brushed a hand through Eliot’s hair, catching on the rougher strands of silver that had started to mix in with the brown. “Tell me it wasn’t years.”

Eliot shook his head, frowning. “Felt like. Felt like forever. But it was… six. Six months. Six months and four days, and um. How long was I asleep? Seven hours or so.”

Fuck. Fucking _fuck_. “God, El. That’s - ”

“Worse than you thought?”

“I don’t know. Yeah, maybe. I couldn’t - I couldn’t stand watching you the whole time, it hurt so fucking bad, and sometimes I’d sort of - space out? And I couldn’t always tell how long it had been unless someone happened to say it out loud.”

“I’m sorry,” Eliot said, nuzzling his face into Quentin’s chest. “That I made you see me like that. I know you must have been scared.”

“Of course I was. I was - so fucking scared, El, but _I’m_ the one who’s sorry. This was - this whole thing, six months of our lives… it’s my fault.”

“Don’t say that,” Eliot said, his voice dripping with adoration and relief. “It doesn’t matter, Q, you’re _here_ , okay? Do you have any idea what a miracle that is?”

“I should have been here the whole time,” Quentin protested, his heart in his throat. “I left you. I know I didn’t mean to, but I _left_ you, El, and I - ”

Eliot interrupted him with a kiss, deep and thorough and full of every ounce of devotion Quentin knew he felt. Would always feel. “Baby,” he said, when he finally separated them. “I told you, once, when you were gone - I - I don’t know if you heard, but I told you that once you were back, I’d make sure you knew how much I love you. How happy you make me.” He paused, took a deep breath, and pressed his lips to the corner of Quentin’s mouth. “You are the best part of my life. You make me so happy every second of every day. And I have been - I have been _scared_ , Q, I’ve been so fucking scared for you, but you’re here now, and I just - I just want us to be okay, now. At least for a second. Can we - can we do that?”

It wasn’t a deflection. It wasn’t Eliot trying to pretend that they were fine, that there would be no lingering effects of the past months of separation. They both knew they were in for a long road of recovery. Again. They’d been through it before, they knew the drill. What it _was_ , however, was a request for hope. For happiness here, at the moment of triumph, when the worst of the pain was behind them for good.

And so Quentin nodded, smiling up into Eliot’s adoring eyes. “Okay. Okay, yeah, we can do that.”

Before Eliot could kiss him again, there was a knock at the door. “Are you boys decent?” Julia’s voice was half anxious, half amused. She likely knew the answer to that question.

“Either way, we’re coming in,” Margo said, brash and assertive. Quentin barely had time to pull the sheet up to cover them, and push Eliot off so he wasn’t still literally _on top of Quentin_ , when the door burst open.

“Sorry,” Julia said, sheepish, but she didn’t turn around to leave the room, coming in on Margo’s heels. Completely unrepentant, Margo jumped up onto the bed, climbing over the two of them to curl up against Eliot’s other side, nothing but a thin sheet separating her from Eliot’s naked body. Julia came and sat down on the bed next to Quentin, taking the hand that he held out to her and squeezing it tight.

“You couldn’t give us a chance to get dressed?” Quentin said.

“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before,” Margo said with an imperious raise of the eyebrow.

“I haven’t been able to coax the prudishness out of him, after all these years,” Eliot lamented. “It’s my one great failure as a husband and lover.”

“I am _not_ prudish, you just - ” Quentin began, protesting automatically, but Eliot had turned to him, smile wide and incandescent, and the words choked off mid-thought. He smiled back up at him, feeling an electric current jump between the two of them as Eliot tilted his head at him, asking for a kiss.

“They’re practically still in the middle of having reunion sex,” Julia said, frowning at Margo. “I told you we should have waited.”

Margo sighed, clearly put upon, and jumped out of the bed, pushing on Julia’s arm until she stood up. “Fine, we’ll wait outside for a minute. Get dressed, and then we’re all gonna cuddle the shit out of you, Coldwater. Not open for negotiation.”

Quentin didn’t feel like negotiating.

* * *

**ELIOT**

It was a couple of weeks before Eliot’s heart stopped stuttering in panic every time Quentin was out of his direct line of sight. It was longer still before Eliot could wake up in the morning without feeling a clench of fear deep in his gut, a grasping, desperate need to get his hands on Quentin, to feel his skin, count his heartbeats.

Quentin, bless his perfect heart, was patient with him. Seemed, in fact, as eager and desperate for reassurance as Eliot himself.

So, when he left Eliot in bed one morning to go to the library, Eliot took note. And tried very hard not to remember that the last time Quentin had gone to the library, he’d vanished for half a year. He was normally excellent at compartmentalizing, but recent events had made it a bit more of a challenge.

Quentin found him only a couple of hours later, though, out in the garden with Fen. They were making a wide berth around a particular area of the garden, where Quentin, along with Alice and Julia, had once witnessed a vision of Eliot bleed out and die. It had become automatic, avoiding these intense reminders of past traumas. Eliot wondered if anything further would be tainted for him, in light of this most recent struggle. He’d never been one for spending time in the library, and of course Q still couldn’t stand to go near the back corner, another place he’d come across a vision of a dying Eliot… but would he ever be able to go there now, without glancing over at the table where Quentin had been sitting, working over the new portal spell, testing it out on a whim…

And then six months, gone. Six months, alone and terrified every fucking second. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could shake.

“Hey,” Quentin said, walking up to him and grabbing his arm, offering a cursory smile to Fen before reaching up to kiss him. “Hey, I wanna talk to you about something.”

Eliot shook his head to dispel the bad memories, smiling down at Q and pressing their lips together again. They said goodbye to Fen and made their way to their own room, Eliot sitting down on the edge of the bed as Quentin started to pace, clearly working himself up to something important.

“So you’re aware you’re freaking me out, yes?” Eliot said, trying to coax Quentin into stillness by making a grab for his hand as he passed by.

Quentin grimaced, meeting his eyes for a moment before looking away. “No, it’s okay, don’t be scared, I - I just don’t want you to get mad.”  
“I can’t imagine that I would,” Eliot said honestly. Quentin could do no wrong, as far as he was concerned. He wasn’t done being absurdly grateful for the very fact of his existence. Wasn’t sure if he ever would be.

“So, when I was - trapped, you know, I had a lot of time to think. Sometimes being around you, being around anyone, it hurt too much, so I’d go off somewhere to be alone. To be - _more_ alone, I guess. And I’d think about all of the bullshit that you and I have endured over the years together. All of the improbable, impossible things we’ve survived.”

“Q.” Eliot’s heart flopped over in his chest, pinpricks of tears behind his eyes. “I know. But we’re here, baby, we made it - ”

“Yeah, this time,” Quentin said.

“No, nothing else is going to happen. I won’t let it.”

A stupid, pointless, impossible promise, and they both knew it. But Quentin still smiled at him, finally stopping his pacing and coming to stand in between Eliot’s legs, tilting to kiss his forehead.

“I was thinking about how even though I was the one who was stuck, you had the worse part of the bargain. Not knowing where I was, worrying I was dead.”

“I feel like it would be insensitive of me to agree,” Eliot said, careful. “I know how bad it was for you.”

“But I knew you were safe. I knew you were miserable, which was obviously - not fun. But I knew you were safe, and that our friends were watching out for you.”

“Okay, so are we having a misery competition here?” Eliot asked, surprised to find that despite his assurances, he _was_ a little bit annoyed. Quentin did this, of course, talking in circles until he finally zoomed in on the point. It was just - not always fun, when the topic was something as messy and challenging as what they’d just been through. They hadn’t had a chance to visit their therapist on Earth about it yet, another thing Eliot knew was a good idea but seriously wasn’t looking forward to.

“I found - ” Quentin coughed, looking down at his feet, then back up at Eliot. “I found a spell we could do.”

Whatever Eliot had been expecting, it wasn’t that. “A spell? What kind of spell?”

“It’s a sort of binding,” Quentin said, cautious. “It would mean that… we could never be separated like that again.”

Eliot blinked at him. That sounded - wonderful, obviously, but he still had no idea what Quentin was talking about, and he couldn’t quite place the expression on his face, or the hesitant lilt to his words. “Okay?”

“Yeah,” Quentin said, nodding his head and spreading his arms wide. “It would - it’s like - a thing people did sometimes, as part of a marriage ceremony, but it’s not something that happens very often because it’s sort of… intense. Like, life and death, intense.”

“Sorry,” Eliot said, sitting up straighter and peering at Quentin. “Life and death. Like - you mean, like - ”

Quentin swallowed, then stared him directly in the eye. “If something happened to me, it would happen to you too. We’d never be separated, we’d never have to - ”

Oh my god. It hit him, suddenly, what this was, what it meant that Quentin was saying this to him. They’d be taking the metaphorical and turning it literal, making themselves one in a physical, tangible sense. One life, shared between the two of them.

For a shining second, Eliot wanted it. He wanted it so badly he could fucking taste it, to be linked to Quentin, to know his own life would end when Quentin’s did, the gift of oblivion in the face of possible tragedy.

“But it goes both ways,” Eliot said, saying the thought out loud as it occurred to him. “So if a piano falls on my head or whatever, you die.”

“Well, yeah.”

Yeah. Right.

That explained Quentin’s hesitance, the way he was bracing himself for Eliot’s answer. Because knowing that - _knowing_ that he’d die with Quentin… it had its attractions, despite how unhealthy he knew his attitude was. But knowing that Quentin would drop dead the second his own heart stopped beating? He just couldn’t.

“I’m a massive hypocrite,” Eliot said, nearly amused at himself as his rational mind caught up with itself. “But - no. I can’t.”

Eliot took a moment to study the expression on Quentin’s face, watched as a grimace of chagrined, reluctant relief washed over him. “Okay.”

“Okay?”

“I’m glad.” The hard part clearly over, Quentin flopped down gracelessly next to Eliot on the bed. “I just… I kept thinking that we needed an insurance policy. For what to do when this kind of shit happens to us again.”

“Can you please not say _when_?” Eliot groused, throwing himself down so he was lying beside Quentin, looking over at him with a humorless twist of his lips. “I told you, I’m done with this bullshit. I can’t take it again.”

“I get it,” Quentin said. “Believe me, I get it. I’m sorry if - ”  
  
“I love you so much for being willing to do that for me,” Eliot said, cutting off the apology. “And I’m not going to say it’s not a tempting thought. I already feel like we’re one person sometimes, you know? Not that we’re the same, but that I’m not even - I’m not even myself if you’re not there. To make that true, in the literal sense…”

“It flies in the face of every single fucking thing we’ve talked about in therapy.”

Eliot laughed, turning his head to knock their foreheads together, nuzzling their noses. “Well, I’ve been a bit preoccupied. I’m afraid we’ve missed a couple of sessions.”

“We’re perhaps a little bit rusty on the particulars,” Quentin agreed.

“Yes, like the idea that I’m supposed to find meaning in my life if you’re not there. I’m supposed to be okay, if you’re gone.”

Quentin lifted himself up onto an elbow to look down into Eliot’s face. “It’s not any easier for me than it is for you, you know.”

“How did you do it before?” Eliot asked, aware he was delving into tricky territory. Talking about the mosaic garnered mixed results, depending on Quentin’s mood. Fortunately, he simply shrugged, gifting him with a small smile.

“I got through Ari’s death because of you and Teddy. Got through yours because of Teddy and his family.”

“But it sucked. Both times,” Eliot said. He remembered the way the grief had bowled them both over, crippling them and nearly tearing their relationship apart, in the wake of Arielle’s death. The specifics were hard to remember, a lot of the time. The feelings were there, though, buried but a part of him, always.

“Yeah, duh, it sucked.”

“But a _survivable_ sort of sucking,” Eliot said, suddenly contemplative. “Maybe we could replicate those results.”

Eliot wasn’t sure where the words had come from, and the full implications didn’t even hit him until after they were out of his mouth. Quentin, who was still up on one elbow, sat fully up so he was perched on the end of the bed, staring straight ahead of him. Clearly he’d recognized logical conclusion behind Eliot’s words, too.

“An insurance policy in case one of us dies young is a terrible reason to have a kid,” Quentin said, but he didn’t sound angry about it, more just - contemplative.

“Obviously,” Eliot said. He sat up too, surprised by how entirely not-freaked-out he was, to find himself suddenly having this conversation. “I just - I was a good father once, and I think I actually could be again. If you wanted.”

“Of course I - ” Quentin paused, shook his head to clear it. “I mean, I think I want that too. I just… haven’t given it any real thought, I guess. In some ways it feels like that part of my life already happened? But like - just because I was already a dad once doesn’t mean I couldn’t be again.”

“We have time,” Eliot said, and the truth of that warmed him straight through, every inch tingling with the relief and joy of togetherness and peace. “We have so much time, Q.”

“There could never be enough,” Quentin said, smiling at him. “I’d live a hundred lifetimes with you, if I could.”

“Yeah, I know,” Eliot said. “But I don’t want to obsess about the time we wasted, or the time that was stolen from us, okay? And I don’t want us to live our lives expecting any more bullshit, living in fear of the next time things go sideways for us. I just want us to be happy. Here. Now. And for as long as we’ve got.”

“That’s such a healthy attitude I’m almost worried someone’s messing with your head,” Quentin said, leaning forward to brush a hand through Eliot’s hair.

“Hmm. Given our track record, it’s a distinct possibility.”

“How about no more of that?” Quentin said. “How about we don’t fuck around with any more improbable magical curses or make any more stupid mistakes? We leave the Earth-to-Fillory travel issues to our way smarter friends, and we just - become boring married middle-aged Fillorian citizens?”

Eliot kissed him then, just for the joy of it. There was no urgency, no desperate need to escalate, to feel every inch of Quentin pressed in and around and through him. He could, he knew, tip Quentin back onto the bed, and Q would let him. He could peel him out of his clothes and sink into him and fuck him for hours, and it would feel as wonderful and breathtaking as it always did. But he could also just kiss him soft and then pull away, press their temples together and let his eyes flicker closed. Because he knew Quentin would still be there when he opened them again.

“You know,” Eliot said, pressing another kiss against the corner of Quentin’s lips. “I think boring, married, and middle-aged sounds just about perfect.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So that’s it! The Curses universe was never something I expected to expand so much, but I’m so pleased that people have kept coming back! Each story I write in this series is meant to feel like an ending while leaving the chance open for more, should inspiration strike. I may be returning to this universe someday, or I may not… but I can say for a certainty that in this universe, and in any universe I write about, Quentin and Eliot remain together for the rest of their long and happy lives!
> 
> My next project is one I’m very excited to tell you about - my very own Season One AU, with a twist! I’m hoping to post the first chapter of that story in a few weeks, with the goal of doing regular weekly updates. I will keep you posted!
> 
> Come join me on tumblr @Nellie-Elizabeth!


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